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.
Center for Bioethics and Humanities, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, New York 13210, USA. dwyerja@upstate.edu
James
J
Dwyer
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