Biomedical and environmental ethics alliance: Common causes and grounds

Abstract

In the late 1960s Van Rensselaer Potter, a biochemist and cancer researcher, thought that our survival was threatened by the domination of military policy makers and producers of material goods ignorant of biology. He called for a new field of Bioethics-"a science of survival." Bioethics did develop, but with a narrower focus on medical ethics. Recently there have been attempts to broaden that focus to bring biomedical ethics together with environmental ethics. Though the two have many differences-in habits of thought, scope of concern, and value commitments-in this paper we argue that they often share common cause and we identify common ground through an examination of two case studies, one addressing drug development, the other food production. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.