Abstract
There are two ways to think of the term bioethics, one is as descriptive bioethics-the way people view life and their moral interactions and responsibilities with living organisms in life. The other is prescriptive bioethics-to tell others what is good or bad, what principles are most important ; or to say something / someone has rights and therefore others have duties to them. Both these concepts have much older roots, which we can trace in religions and cultural patterns that may share some universal ideals. This is especially true when we talk of reproduction and genetics, themes of family, which have been discussed for millenia. One of the efforts of universal prescriptive bioethics is the work of the UNESCO International Bioethics Committee to develop guidelines and an UN "Universal Declaration on Protection of the Human Genome and Human Rights" which attempts to protect humanity from future abuses of human genetics. The idea of "genethics"may seem to be reinforced by the creation of a special Declaration to look at its bioethics. However, if we look at all of its twenty articles we see them all in previous laws and Declarations. What this Declaration does is to bring them together in focus in one document, to supplement the existing laws, and act as a catalyst to make us remember what bioethics we should have, and how we should treat our fellow person and the world in which we live. In this paper the use of surveys such as the International Bioethics Survey as a method to study descriptive bioethics is also discussed. When we prescribe bioethics we need to consider not only ethical principles, but the descriptive face of bioethics, to attempt to have bioethics for the people by the people. The importance of international bioethics networks such as Eubios Ethics Institute is also discussed (which is also on Internet <http : //www. biol. tsukuba. ac. jp/〜macer/index. html>).
