Series Foreword

Abstract

Extract Bioethics has, in recent years, become radically more world-responsive in its scope and mission. It has become intertwined with other disciplines and subfields such as political philosophy, environmental ethics, critical race theory, philosophy of science, gender theory, disability studies, and public health. It has added many new lenses to its toolkit and dramatically increased its attention to power relationships, systematic and structural oppressions, and the material and social conditions of existence. The changing scope and texture of bioethics is in part a response to a changing world. We are increasingly aware that “health” is much broader than in-clinic health care. The model of the doctor as a benign authority and privileged source of information that undergirded much early bioethics has given way to a much messier story about multiple sources of information, conflicting authority, capitalism, and power, in which doctors play a smaller and more vexed role. Our health is determined less than once thought by the quality of one’s healthcare, and more than once thought by social position, the material environment including pollutants, food access, transportation options, stress, and stigmas. Inclusive models of health have been urging that health encompasses much more than freedom from disease: sexual pleasure, social connectedness, food security, safety on the street, and more. Thus, bioethics must broaden its view well beyond the confines of the clinic, to encompass large scale social structures and material and economic pressures. This makes it inevitable that high-quality bioethics will be intertwined with environmental ethics, political philosophy, public health, urban studies, and more.