Abstract
This article examines the emergence and consolidation of bioethics as a discipline from a sociological perspective. This reconstruction helps us to understand on the one hand what is meant by bioethics and what its practices and areas of inquiry are, and on the other to identify various concepts and expert opinions about what the field of study for bioethics should be, opinions which lead in practice to different applications of the discipline in health sciences. This becomes relevant for epistemological discussions about the discipline and for consolidating a sociology of bioethics in the context of Ibero-America.
bioethics; history and sociology of bioethics; history of the discipline of bioethics