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Human Health and the Environment: In Harmony or in Conflict?

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Abstract

Health policy frameworks usually construe environmental protection and human health as harmonious values. Policies that protect the environment, such as pollution control and pesticide regulation, also benefit human health. In recent years, however, it has become apparent that promoting human health sometimes undermines environmental protection. Some actions, policies, or technologies that reduce human morbidity, mortality, and disease can have detrimental effects on the environment. Since human health and environmental protection are sometimes at odds, political leaders, citizens, and government officials need a way to mediate and resolve conflicts between these values. Unfortunately, few approaches to applied bioethics have the conceptual tools to do accomplish this task. Theories of health care ethics have little to say about the environment, and theories of environmental ethics don’t say much about human health. In this essay, I defend an approach to ethical decision-making that gives policy-makers some tools for balancing promotion of human health and protection of the environment.

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Notes

  1. This raises the issue of whether we have obligations to future generations at all. This is complex philosophical question that I cannot answer in this essay. See Gewirth [17].

  2. For further discussion, see LaFollette and Shanks [21].

  3. For further discussion, see Gutmann and Thompson [18], Mason [23].

  4. For more on environmental justice issues, see Shrader-Frechette [41]

  5. It is also possible that some other influential theories of bioethics, such as Beauchamp and Childress’ view or Jonsen, Siegler, and Winslade’s view, could be modified to allow for proper consideration of the environment in health care decision-making, but I will not explore that option in depth here.

Abbreviations

CDC:

Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention

DDT:

Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane

EPA:

Environmental Protection Agency

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the intramural program of the NIEHS/NIH. It does not represent the views of the NIEHS or NIH.

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Correspondence to David B. Resnik.

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Resnik, D.B. Human Health and the Environment: In Harmony or in Conflict?. Health Care Anal 17, 261–276 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10728-008-0104-x

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