De nobis ipsis silemus: About ourselves — we keep silent. If we violate this prudent rule by the least modest of literary exercises — the autobiography — we must be able to say that we do so to bear witness. From my intellectual vocation of physician and philosopher, I have received the Chinese blessing of “living in interesting times.” I received two degrees in 1962 and spent thirty years developing a previously unimaginable encounter between medicine and humanism. That which follows (...) tells the story of the development of bioethics in Ibero-America from the perspective of a testifying witness. (shrink)