The area of biomedicine is one of the fastes developing areas of science and technology. The perception of its possible and wxpected positive or negative impacts results in the growing number of bioethical discussions in scientific community, politics and public. Their intensity, focus and used methods differ from country to country. he authors of the prologue have tried to map the state of the art and expected development of bioethical discussion in the coutnries of Middle and Eastern Europe. In the beginning, they addressed the bioethical experts with short questionnaire from 7 "new" European coutries (Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) and two "old" European coutries (Germany and Austria). In the end, seven experts have responde their question (Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Austria and Germany) and expressed their expectations and difficulties of the development of bioethical discussions and institutionalisations in their countries. The authors summarize in the prologue the most interesting results. and Gerhard Banse, Monika Bartíková.