ENVIRONMENTAL BIOETHICS

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 Coordinator: James Dwyer

James Dwyer, PhD.
SUNY Upstate Medical University
Center for Bioethics and Humanities
725 Irving Avenue, Suite 406
Syracuse, NY 13210
Email: dwyerja@upstate.edu

Background. When Van Rensselaer Potter coined the term “bioethics” in 1970, he had in mind a field of study that would bring together biological knowledge and ethical concern. He hoped this field would include broad issues about global trends, population health, acceptable survival, and the natural environment. But these broad issues received relatively little attention in the field that appropriated the name “bioethics.” For the most part, bioethics focused on medical developments and ignored environmental issues. But the environmental problems are more serious and urgent than ever:

• climate change
• population growth
• over consumption of resources
• shortages of fresh water
• deforestation
• air pollution
• emerging infectious diseases
• extinction of species

In the face of these and other problems, we need to consider ways to bring environmental concerns back into bioethics.

Membership. We maintain an email list of members, and we meet at each IAB Congress.

Goals. The goals of this Network are:

• To bring together concerns about health, the environment, sustainability, justice, and responsibility
• To integrate these concerns into discussions, scholarship, and activism
• To explore how public health ethics could bridge bioethics and environmental ethics