Making people be healthy.
How are we supposed to decide the rights and wrongs of banning smoking in bars, restricting adverts for junk food, nagging people into being screened for cancers, or banning the sale of party pills? The aim of this paper is to think through the political ethics of trying to make people healthier through influencing or restricting their choices. This paper covers: (1) Paternalism. What it is, what it assumes. (2) The place of health in well-being, and how this makes paternalism problematic. (3) The mistakes people make in acting in their own interests, and the implications for pro-health paternalism. (4) Autonomy objections to paternalism. The paper (5) finishes on a note of hope, by commending the currently fashionable libertarian paternalism: trying to have one's carrot cake and eat it too. A persistent theme is that thinking sensibly about making people healthier needs subtlety, not broad, ringing declarations.
Wilkinson
Timothy Martin
TM
Department of Political Studies, The University of Auckland, PB 92019 Auckland, New Zealand. m.wilkinson@auckland.ac.nz
D002755:Choice Behavior; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000941:ethics* / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D026706:Paternalism / Q000941:ethics*; D010358:Patient Participation; D028701:Patient Rights; D026684:Personal Autonomy