The social determinants of health by Marmot and Wilkinson are a list of social circumstances that impede or positively influence good health. Pointing out barriers to achieving health, the social determinants set the backdrop for justice-based bioethics. Access to good jobs in which one has agency or discretion and a living wage and access to…
In bioethics, moral controversies may have high stakes. Differences of fact or opinion are of a different nature than moral disagreements. There are factual disagreements where a truth may be discovered, making one side right and one side wrong. During the COVID-19 pandemic, some such factual questions were politicized, but that alone does not turn…
Bioethics must recognize a syndemics approach to ethical solutions to the obesity epidemic in the US. The line between public health and personal health is artificial. Economic, political, and social structures influence the body in the doctor’s office. Public health approaches obesity various ways—usually by recommendations of exercise and lifestyles that are unattainable. Public programs…
Self-driving cars, warehouse robots, EZ-pass, do-it-yourself check-outs, and ATMs threaten the future of work. Work and its many components including pay, atmosphere, feeling of inclusion, and empowerment are social determinants of health. Potential job loss is a valid consideration in ethical arguments to restrict the development or uses of new technologies, yet there is not…
The climate change framework that I set forth in the course accompanying this blog focuses on a broad “No Natural Disasters” protection of those vulnerability to climate change. Climate migration is already underway and has many causes. The ethical approaches should acknowledge human rights, responsibility for climate change, and the root of the moral obligations….
New ethical standards will help discern what is or is not morally (and legally) owed animals now that techno-science affects wildlife and ecosystems. The term privacy rights as it applies to animals highlights the risks of high-tech surveillance using drones, vehicles, and camera traps. Tagging and tracing devices aimed for conservation efforts and to protect…