One of the fields in which science and technology have made the greatest progress in recent years is the biological field. Such are the innovations that new findings have affected economics, pharmacology, clinical surgery even encroaching on ethics. Increasingly, in fact, there is talk of 'bioethics'. Interesting novelty. It was since the 18th century that science and philosophy had definitely taken different paths. C.P. Snow's famous essay The Two Cultures (latest edition Marsilio, 2005) gave an accurate and alarming account of this.

This is no longer the case today; bioethics itself has brought science and philosophy back together. The two fundamental moments of life, birth and death, have been profoundly changed, both can be manipulated or delayed (at least vegetative life) from mighty machinery. Where does science end? Where does ethics begin?

Where does life begin? from what can the fusion of an egg and a sperm be affected? In what location? In its natural vessel or in a bottle? And how long can the vital functions of an organism be preserved?A beating heart even though the brain is now shut down?

These crucial issues will be discussed by a thoughtful writer like Corrado Augias and a great and generous scientist like Umberto Veronesi.

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