Can Bioethics Survive in a Dying World?

Abstract

Significant changes in the natural environment over the past 40 years pose key challenges to health and health care in the 21st century. Health care has not yet given serious attention to what the current environmental situation means for human health, or for maintaining an effective health care system. Bioethics is in a good position to help health professionals engage environmental questions. But bioethics, as a field, will first need to explore and integrate “ecological thinking”—thinking based in the concept of connectedness and committed to viewing humans are part of nature rather than exempt from it.