Environmental Bioethics Research Articles

Bioética Ambiental y el Manejo de Desechos Sólidos en La Parroquia La Pila, Cantón Montecristi

The bioethical principles: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and justice, have been analyzed in detail in the medical sciences, however, the possibility of contextualization in the natural sciences has been discovered. So much so, that the study aims to address the environmental problem. The objective is to analyze the management of solid waste taking into account environmental bioethics as a value in the La Pila parish. The proposal is exploratory, the survey and observation technique was applied, as research methods the historical logical, qualitative, analytical, quantitative, achieving a solid understanding of the numerical results of the theoretical discussion and the alternative solutions to the identified problem. . As results, it was evident that the population has a high percentage of ignorance of solid waste management in the parish, therefore a comprehensive solid waste management system was developed. Bioethics and environmental sciences are intertwined; there are studies in Ecuador that reveal this relationship. The environmental bioethics training and the workshop on ethical principles in the proper management of solid waste provided to the population of the Las Lagunas sector of La Parroquia La Pila, helped them to be more aware of keeping the sector clean and having appropriate of them.

Does Catholic Health Care Have a Responsibility to Those Harmed by Pollution?

Pollution results from humankind’s failure to be good stewards of creation. Guided by Catholic environmental bioethics, Catholic health care organizations have reduced their contribution to this pollution, but they also encounter its human cost. Catholic hospitals treat countless patients sickened by pollution, which most strongly impacts the poor and disenfranchised—those whom the Church expresses a preferential responsibility to care for, in part via the charity care that Catholic health care provides. The poor encounter another cost of pollution: the financial cost of seeking health care, particularly in the US. The authors argue that Catholic health care institutions should take the moral harm of pollution seriously by reducing the financial burden on those sickened by pollution. As an example, they highlight the situation of those sickened by lead exposure in the US and outline how Catholic health care institutions could consider lessening the financial burden of treating this sickness.

The eco-ethical contribution of Menico Torchio – a forgotten pioneer of European Bioethics

BackgroundIn 1926, Fritz Jahr described bio-ethics (German: bio-ethik) as “the assumption of moral obligations not only towards humans, but towards all forms of life.” Jahr summarized his philosophy by declaring, “Respect every living being on principle as an end in itself and treat it, if possible, as such!.” Bioethics was thus originally an ethical system concerned with the “problems of interference with other living beings… and generally everything related to the balance of the ecosystem” according to the 1978 Encyclopedia of Bioethics. This definition was predicated on the work of Fritz Jahr, Menico Torchio, and Van Rensselaer Potter.MethodsIn order to proceed with depthful analysis of the origin and major bioethical flare up, we will use critical analysis of existing literature, followed by a study trip to relevant bioethical localities (collecting photo and other documentations regarding Menico Torchio).ResultsWhile Jahr and Potter are typically given intellectual credit for developing the field of bioethics, the eco-ethical contributions of Menico Torchio have been forgotten.This article will first trace the origins of “bioethics” – now commonly bifurcated into “biomedical ethics” and “environmental bioethics.” The former was developed by Tom Beauchamp from the Philosophy Department and James Childress of the Religious Studies department at Georgetown University and is based on principlism, with a narrow focus on medical settings. The latter addresses the environmental impact of the medical industry and climate change health hazards. Second, we will present a panorama of Torchio’s significant intellectual contribution to bioethics. Menico Torchio’s concept of bioethics synthesized work of both Jahr and Potter, advocating “the need to expand our ethical obligations and embrace the most developed groups of animals, not only physically but also psychologically.” Third, we will reflect on the lasting legacy of “bioethics” on biomedical and environmental bioethics today. Thematic elements such as interconnectedness of planetary health and human health, dedication to living in harmony with nature, and emphasis on systems and symbiosis remain unchanged from the legacy of Tochio onward.ConclusionOur conclusion will underscore the necessity of understanding the connections between planetary, environmental, and human health.

MINIMALIST LIFESTYLE DETERMINATION SCALE DEVELOPMENT STUDY IN TERMS OF ENVIRONMENTAL BIOETHICS

The minimalist lifestyle is to maintain a simple life in many areas of your life, such as things, clothes, food, exercise, money, time, and technology. The minimalist lifestyle is intertwined with the concept of sustainable consumption. In sustainable consumption, a person consumes only as much as he needs, does not spend limited world resources on luxury aspirations. This lifestyle shows people that happiness comes with simple living, not consumption. In this study, the scale of minimalist lifestyle determination has been developed in terms of environmental bioethics. After the literature review, expert opinion was taken for the item pool created, and statistical studies of the scale were carried out accordingly. Afterwards, the pilot study of the scale was carried out. Scale sampling was applied after the arrangements made after the pilot study. The universe of the study consists of employees (academicians, administrative staff and others) of two universities and all individuals who agreed to participate without going to the sample selection were included in the study. The sample consisted of 408 people. As a result of statistical studies carried out after sampling of the scale, the scale was finalized. The scale consists of 25 items and 3 dimensions. These dimensions are called “Minimalist Life”, “Sustainable Environment” and “Time Management”.

Care for the Environment as a Consideration in Bioethics Discourse and Education

This article argues that environmental considerations fall within the scope of medical bioethics, and there are implications specific to medical education. It endorses the need to expand the scope and epistemology of contemporary medical bioethics discourse by including themes related to environmental considerations. Our discussion begins by providing a brief history of environmental bioethics. It then offers a critique of three specific health and environmental issues, namely technology, toxics, and consumption, and discusses how these issues are key to articulating moral considerations of human health and subsequently medicine and its teaching. Lastly, it explores criticisms of including environmental issues into the bioethical debate before providing suggestions of how environmental ethics can be included into the medical curriculum. This article concludes by suggesting theoretical possibilities for environmentally inclusive bioethics, such as reorienting bioethical discussions to its original environmental advocacy and supporting environmental bioethics as a competency in medical education.

Implicações bioéticas para o desenvolvimento rural sustentável

Considering the advances and technologies of conventional food production and the relationships already evidenced with devastating consequences for human health and the environment, this article brings discussions, through a bibliographic review, on the interdisciplinary genesis of bioethics and the discourse of authors of global environmental bioethics and sustainability: Van Renssealer Potter, Raquel Carson, Lutzemberg, Moltmann, Leonardo Boff and Jaime Breilh. The knowledge of bioethics within sustainable rural development, mainly related to the issue of pesticides is necessary when thinking about interdisciplinary environmental and health education. In addition to anato-physiological capacities, the human being is also a social y cultural being, with values and, equally, an environmental being, where the environment and the activities that exercises are totally connected to his health and quality of life.

An alternative to analysing environmental bioethics

An alternative to analysing environmental bioethics

An alternative to analysing environmental bioethics

An alternative to analysing environmental bioethics

Pharmaceuticals in the Water: The Need for Environmental Bioethics.

Pharmaceuticals are present in various water sources used by wildlife and as drinking water for humans. Research shows that certain pharmaceuticals, sold over the counter and by prescription only, can harm wildlife. Moreover, the human ingestion of water contaminated by polypharmacy presents a potential cause for concern for human health. Despite the wide scope of this problem, environmental bioethics has not adequately engaged with this topic and, instead, has concerned itself with healthcare waste products more generally. The present essay calls for more ethical investigation on the topic.

Black Natural Law and Black Bioethics, Measured by References to Anna Julia Cooper and Womanist Wordings

Abstract Here is a critical appreciation of Black Natural Law (2016) by Vincent Lloyd and “black bioethics” (2020) by Keisha Ray and others. Both are measured by references to A Voice from the South (1892) by Anna Julia Cooper, A Singing Something: Womanist Reflections on Anna Julia Cooper (1994) and Sisters of Dust, Sisters of Spirit: Womanist Wordings on God and Creations (1998) by Karen Baker-Fletcher. These “womanist wordings” suggest “black natural law” and “black bioethics” should be supplemented by art, and by recourse to nature (all of nature) and environmental bioethics, including struggles for environmental justice and earth healing.

Incorporando la bioética ambiental a los cuidados materno perinatales para disminuir los riesgos de la Pan-Sindemia en el proceso reproductivo.

Until now, the bioethical approach to maternal perinatal care is projected from the integral vision of bio-psycho-social health, the perspective of Human Rights and the gender perspective. In general, the ecological bioethics that arises from the perspective of environmental health has not been incorporated into maternal-perinatal care with regard to “global ethics”, environmental bioethics, the perspective of “consilience” and the importance of the healthy environment as a human right. The current global crisis situation due to the combination of the COVID 19 Pandemic and the Global Syndemic, characterized as Pan Syndemic, increases the risks and damages in the reproductive process, especially in populations violated in their rights. JUSTIFICATION It is necessary to minimize the effect of the Pan Syndemic on the human reproductive process. On the global agenda, humanity must reverse the causes of the Pan Syndemic. Meanwhile, health professionals and teams must reformulate their role when it comes to maternal-perinatal care, incorporating into the clinic the right to a healthy environment for reproduction. PERSPECTIVES Modifications in the clinical practice of sexual and reproductive health teams should be aimed at: incorporate ecological bioethics into maternal perinatal care from training to clinical practice; develop a comprehensive approach to major perinatal obstetric syndromes, prematurity and fetal growth restriction, to minimize the impact of the Pan Syndemic on the human reproductive process.

Reflexões bioéticas sobre vida e saúde na região amazônica

Abstract This work approaches the complex relationship between humans and the environment, preconizing the vital relationships established by the nature itself to subsist. To that end, exploratory research on environmental bioethics, structured from philosophical fundaments, was carried out. With a systemic point of view, it seeks to build and consolidate, deductively, a practical ethic that stimulates the necessary preservation of the Amazonian region. It designs, then, a narrative literary review, focusing on historical-mythological aspects of Amazon, deforestation and fires, and laws regarding health problems, highlighting the importance of interdisciplinary diagnosis. As a result, it urges the discussion on the impacts of human activities, considering links of prevention and responsibility based on values of goodness, justice, and equilibrium, and keeping in mind that harmony and care are principles inherent to existence itself.

Ethical Conduct with Invertebrate Animals: Routes for Inclusive, Humanitarian, and Sustainable Education

Perceptions of nature depend on experiences relating to biodiversity, thus this study investigated the representation of invertebrates in different sections of Brazilian society by means of a questionnaire available from March to December 2015 as a resource in terms of the conservation of nature and human health in order to design an ethical values guide for this relationship. This study tested the hypotheses that there are differences in the conception and representation: a) associated with gender, educational level, use of animals in vocational training, tutoring, and housing area; b) according to the role assigned to invertebrates as a resource, including in conservation and health; and c) that the different representations result in different value assignments used to intermediate decisions on how, when, and why to use invertebrates. Thus, through quantitative and cross-sectional research, our objective was to identify the popular representation of invertebrates. The analysis of the results of an online questionnaire with 281 respondents showed definitions and concepts that were predominantly similar to the tested variables, which suggests that the present study provides evidence for the understanding of the ecological importance of the invertebrates, the belief in their sentience, and disagreement with the substitutive use of vertebrates in experimentation. However, the naturalistic and ecological positions regarding nature prevailed, indicating the persistence of utilitarian values. The results cast interpretive clues that the only by cooperation between education and environmental bioethics will possible the confluence of values and interests of animals and human in favor of a critical, ethical, and sustainable society.

Environmental Bioethics and Global Health: Latrodectism in the State of Paraná.

Objetivou-se analisar aspectos epidemiológicos e biológicos do latrodectismo no Estado do Paraná. Para tal, foi realizada análise epidemiológica, mapeamento da distribuição das espécies e conduzido estudos laboratoriais. Os dados epidemiológicos não permitiram caracterização segura do latrodectismo, uma vez que em 95% dos casos, as aranhas causadoras de acidentes foram identificadas até o nível taxonômico de gênero, correspondendo com escassez de aranhas tombadas em coleções científicas oficiais. O comportamento e biologia da espécie Latrodectus geometricus inferem potencial de adaptação a substratos antrópicos tendo em vista a estereotipa do comportamento copulatório, oviposição frequente e consecutiva e baixa mortalidade durante desenvolvimento ontogenético. Sugere-se a inclusão de aspectos epidemiológicos e biológicos da espécie nos indicadores de risco pela vigilância ambiental e sequente aplicação na preservação ecológica das espécies e de acidentes e promoção da qualidade de vida da população.

Reconsidering solidarity in an African modified principlism

Principlism has attracted severe criticisms in contemporary bioethical scholarship. Scholars working in bioethics in the sub-Sahara have challenged the autonomy component of principlism, with strong emphasis on solidarity as a more fundamental principle that ought to guide bioethical discourses and practices in Africa and beyond. Focusing on Kevin Gary Behrens, who defends an indigenous Africaninspired version of principlism that incorporates salient African moral values including community, relationality, harmony and solidarity, this article questions the nebulous conception of solidarity in Behrens’ African modified principlism (AMP). AMP is anchored in the principles of respect for persons, beneficence, non-maleficence and harmony. Contra Behrens, I argue that the attempt to replace the American principlist model ‘with a new African-inspired principlist mantra’ can only succeed when there is a thorough analysis of the nature and boundaries of solidarity, which is currently lacking. Advancing on Thaddeus Metz’s construction of solidarity in his ‘Afro-bioethic of communion’, I defend a metaphoric normative conception of solidarity that represents historical symbols of the self and the other in a reflexive-care matrix of identification, recognition, inclusion and empathy. Beyond the partialist frame grounding the understanding of solidarity in African bioethical thought, which is inadequate, I offer a metaphoric, sympathetic and unbound space of solidarity. Suggested for future research is investigating the ranging implications of a metaphoric normative understanding of solidarity for dealing with vulnerable and non-vulnerable groups in the context of healthcare and environmental bioethics at the local, regional and global levels.

Why Does the Current World Environment Need Environmental Bioethics?

Why Does the Current World Environment Need Environmental Bioethics?

Can Clinical Ethics Survive Climate Change?

The Ethics of Environmentally Responsible Health Care (2004) argued that the obligation to protect nature must be a core principle of bioethics and that the environmental harm of health-care practices should be taken seriously. In the two decades since, the accelerating pace of climate change and environmental decline has strengthened the moral case for reducing the environmental costs of health care. Nevertheless, mainstream bioethics has until recently neglected these vital issues. In response, a field of clinical environmental bioethics is emerging that applies concepts and measures of sustainability to such key clinical ethical issues as humanizing technology, setting limits, caring for the dying, respecting patient wishes, and allocating resources justly. Bioethical analysis of these and other issues can support just and humane health-care adaptation to climate change. Health-care adaptation in turn plays an important role in helping communities and nations adapt to the inevitable forward march of climate change. This essay offers two recommendations: (1) establish a climate transition commission for health-care adaptation to climate change with bioethics participation, and (2) strengthen advocacy for health-care reform by uniting it with climate activism.

Ecopedagogía para la formación bioética ambiental en estudiantes de enfermería

Es urgente tomar conciencia para restablecer y proteger el ambiente, debido a la magnitud de la destrucción ambiental a nivel mundial que ha producido el propio ser humano al dejarse llevar por una cultura de consumismo y descarte, sin considerar las consecuencias a futuro para las próximas generaciones. El ambiente es considerado un determinante de la salud, por ello es importante incorporarlo en el estudio de los profesionales de enfermería, siendo pertinente utilizar los principios de la ecopedagogía durante su formación puesto que se enfoca no solo en la educación ambiental, sino que incluye la visión de desarrollo sostenible, es decir cuidar el ambiente y aprovecharlo de manera razonable, para mejorar las condiciones de vida de las personas. Con este ensayo se pretende reflexionar y analizar la importancia de la ecopedagogía para la formación en bioética ambiental de los futuros profesionales de enfermería.

Hacia una fundamentación de la Bioética Ambiental desde la visión de Fritz Jahr, Aldo Leopold y Van Rensselaer Potter

Resumen
 El presente artículo hace una reflexión acerca de los postulados ambientalistas inherentes al cuerpo teórico de la bioética. Se delimita la Bioética Ambiental en la visión de Potter, mediante el análisis de su obra. Se analiza del pensamiento de Leopold (1949), enfocado en una ética ecocéntrica. También se realiza un recuento de la propuesta de Jahr (1927), pensamiento antecesor de la bioética. Se desarrolla además una revisión de las propuestas sobre bioética ambiental en el ámbito latinoamericano. El objetivo de la investigación fue establecer unos postulados para el campo de estudio de la bioética ambiental que permitan una interpretación de la crisis ambiental, en el contexto de los ecosistemas planetarios. La metodología aplicada, bajo el enfoque cualitativo, consistió en una revisión documental, en perspectiva hermenéutica, de la obra de Jhar, Leopold y Potter; igualmente, de algunos estudios de autores latinoamericanos. Fue establecido como periodo de tiempo para la recolección de dicha información, los años de 1970 a 2017, periodo en el cual se produjeron los principales estudios internacionales sobre la problemática ambiental en el planeta. La reflexión permitió concluir que se consolidan en el ámbito de la bioética ambiental, cuatro actuaciones centrales: la defensa a ultranza de la vida, en cualquiera de sus manifestaciones; la promoción de la existencia de personas sanas en armonía con ecosistemas sanos; la estructuración de normas ambientales para la protección de las ciudades y los bosques; y producir industrialmente para una vida digna, bajo parámetros de protección de los ecosistemas.

El estudio de la bioética ambiental para todos los niveles de educación y su importancia en la gobernanza colombiana

En el presente artículo se analiza la importancia del estudio de la bioética ambiental en la gobernanza de los territorios dentro de un contexto de problemáticas ambientales diversas y con difícil solución. La investigación se desarrolla en la Universidad Militar Nueva Granada de Bogotá D.C. en el año 2020. Se aborda el problema ambiental en Colombia empleando un tamizaje de los postulados bibliográficos referentes a la educación en bioética ambiental, teniendo en cuenta el papel de los seres humanos en la protección del medio ambiente, la biosfera y la biodiversidad como lo señala la Declaración Universal sobre Bioética y Derechos Humanos. En la investigación se establece la educación en bioética ambiental como el acicate de la gobernanza para la solución de las problemáticas ambientales en el proceso de una transformación cultural del paradigma de desarrollo. Se concluye que la bioética ambiental es un baluarte fundamental de las interacciones entre las comunidades y las entidades del Estado para la preservación de la vida y de los ecosistemas como modelo de gobernanza en la búsqueda del desarrollo sostenible.