How to connect bioethics and environmental ethics: health, sustainability, and justice.
In this paper, I explore one way to bring bioethics and environmental ethics closer together. I focus on a question at the interface of health, sustainability, and justice: How well does a society promote health with the use of no more than a just share of environmental capacity? To address this question, I propose and discuss a mode of assessment that combines a measurement of population health, an estimate of environmental sustainability, and an assumption about what constitutes a fair or just share. This mode of assessment provides an estimate of the just and sustainable life expectancy of a population. It could be used to monitor how well a particular society promotes health within just environmental limits. It could also serve as a source of information that stakeholders use when they deliberate about programs, policies, and technologies. The purpose of this work is to focus attention on an ethical task: the need to fashion institutions and forms of life that promote health in ways that recognize the claims of sustainability and justice.
Dwyer
James
J
Center for Bioethics and Humanities, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York 13210, USA. dwyerja@upstate.edu
D026688:Bioethical Issues; D001675:Bioethics; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D004777:Environment; D014943:Global Health; D006801:Humans; D008017:Life Expectancy; D011634:Public Health / Q000941:ethics*; D012935:Social Justice / Q000941:ethics; D012941:Social Responsibility; D012945:Social Values