Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T18:09:17.978Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bioethics, Public Health, and Firearm-Related Violence: Missing Links Between Bioethics and Public Health

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Leigh Turner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Open any standard bioethics textbook, and therein can be found a host of subjects ranging from the abortion rights controversy to the morality of xenographic tissue transplantation. Just as there is a wide scope to the subject matter of bioethics, its practitioners come from a multitude of disciplines, including law, medicine, nursing, theology, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. And yet, despite a rich variety of investigators and methods, bioethicists overlook numerous subjects that deserve to be addressed. In particular, they neglect issues of public health, preventive medicine, and social medicine. Although topics such as physician-assisted suicide, prenatal genetic testing, and the ethics of new reproductive technologies constitute the contemporary canon of bioethics and deserve sustained analysis, these subjects are not so significant that they should eclipse other issues. For example, gun control policies, the regulation of food additives. immunization programs, prenatal care, leave programs enabling employees to care for dying relatives, the provision of nutrition and medical care to the homeless, and the use of emergency rooms by the most impoverished citizens are all topics neglected by bioethicists.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , Spring 1997 , pp. 42 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Shoemaker, W.C. et al. , “Urban Violence in Los Angeles in the Aftermath of the Riots: A Perspective from Health Care Professionals, with Implications for Social Reconstruction,” JAMA, 270 (1993): 2833–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
See id. at 2834.Google Scholar
Beauchamp, T.L. Childress, J.F., Principles of Bio medical Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th ed., 1994): At 25.Google Scholar
Kopel, D., “Japanese Gun Control,” Asia Pacific Law Review, 2, no. 2 (1993): At 28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barber, C.W. et al. , “When Bullets Don't Kill,” Public Health Reports, 111 (1996): At 483.Google Scholar
Bellah, R.N., “Social Science as Practical Reason,” Hastings Center Report, 12, no. 5 (1982): 32–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klass, P., A Not Entirely Benign Procedure (New York: Signet, 1988): 70–71.Google ScholarPubMed
The inability of bioethicists to recognize particular moral issues receives thoughtful scrutiny from a number of scholars developing feminist scholarship in bioethics. Whereas I focus on the importance of class and class interests, they draw attention to the need for greater awareness of gender for critical social analysis. See, for example, Tong, R., Feminist Approaches to Bioethics: Theoretical Reflections and Practical Applications (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997); Wolf, S.M., ed., Feminism & Bioethics: Beyond Reproduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); and Sherwin, S., No Longer Patient: Feminist Ethics and Health Care (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992). For a more general consideration of the significance of gender for political and moral philosophy, see Okin, S.M., Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989).Google Scholar
Id. at 68.Google Scholar
For a thoughtful discussion of communal forms of common sense and variants of local knowledge that provides resources for those seeking to unveil the most pernicious assumptions current in contemporary bioethics research, see Geertz, C., Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983).Google Scholar
See Barber, et al. , supra note 5, at 488–89.Google Scholar
For a thoughtful scholarly analysis that incorporates discussions of race, ethnicity, and class within an exploration of minority access to health care, see Watson, S.D., “Minority Access and Health Reform: A Civil Right to Health Care,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 22 (1994): 127–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bellah, R.N. et al. , Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1985).Google Scholar
Outka, G., “Social Justice and Equal Access to Health Care,” Journal of Religious Ethics, 2 (1974): At 28.Google Scholar