First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Environmental ethics has traditionally focused on a defense of the intrinsic value of animals and wild habitats. However, this ethical project needs to be supplemented by a consideration of the kind of culture that can take such an ethical point of view seriously. This essay argues that one component of an environmentally responsible culture is its domesticated environment. How we construct the domesticated environment has an impact on our perception of our own identities and our relations to wild nature. If (...) we care about wild nature, we must also care about the domesticated environment in which we live our lives. This essay contributes to an ethical reflection on the need to overcome the traditional dualism between domesticated and wild, built and natural that permeates environmental ethical thinking. (shrink)

Environmental ethics has traditionally focused on a defense of the intrinsic value of animals and wild habitats. However, this ethical project needs to be supplemented by a consideration of the kind of culture that can take such an ethical point of view seriously. This essay argues that one component of an environmentally responsible culture is its domesticated environment. How we construct the domesticated environment has an impact on our perception of our own identities and our relations to wild nature. If (...) we care about wild nature, we must also care about the domesticated environment in which we live our lives. This essay contributes to an ethical reflection on the need to overcome the traditional dualism between domesticated and wild, built and natural that permeates environmental ethical thinking. (shrink)

This article presents standards for setting up and educating institutional ethics committees (IECs). These standards are based on experiences in the Netherlands, where IECs have been established in a large number of health care institutions. Though the IEC has become a generally accepted institution within Dutch health care, there are concerns over its effectiveness regarding the improving of the moral quality of clinical decision making. Health care practitioners and members of IECs too, experience a gap between the IEC and the (...) reality of the clinical environment. At this moment, there is interest in developing programmes which educate practitioners in moral issues and how to deal with them, using the method of a structured debate on the ward. The IEC will not be made obsolete by this development, but can play a guiding role in the implementation of such programmes. Current concerns are the lack of patient representation in the Dutch IEC, and the loss of contact with the local community of health care practitioners because of the merger of hospitals into bodies similar to UK National Health Service (NHS) trusts. (shrink)