The article discusses various bioethical issues addressed by the National Curriculum Guidelines (DCN) for medical schools, a document approved in 2001 by the Ministries of Health and Education, which sets out guidelines for medical training. Bioethics permeates all the DCN guidelines for medical schools. This means that the discipline performs an integrating role in the medical training process. In view of observations backing the hypothesis that education is determined by society, this new paradigm helps to instill the new Brazilian health system, the Unified Health System, with its nuanced and mixed models of health care. Bioethics is given legitimacy by the DCN. It remains for the teaching profession to ensure that it is consolidated in academic circles, as an indispensible discipline, if biological knowledge is to be pursued in a prudent fashion promoting humane values and an ethics of life.
Education, medical; Bioethics; Curriculum