ABSTRACT
Global Bioethics calls for environmental ethics and medical ethics to look at each others’ problems, along with the others’ insights, to achieve the goal. Environmental ethics should be part of the mission of professional public health officers as much as anyone, for it is their work that crosses international borders in both environmental and medical domains. In the development of Global Bioethics, the idea of bioethics moved from a broad concept of integration of biology and the humanities to a narrower integration of medical and environmental bioethics. Global Bioethics is a long-range intuition that leads to the idea that a concern for future generations can lend meaning to life. Global Bioethics maintains the original 1970 interest in “Bioethics: The Science of Survival” and credits the role of Aldo Leopold in formulating the “Land Ethic”. Global Bioethics recognizes the need for ecumenism in the sense advocated by Hans Kung, and agrees with Kung in advocating human survival in the long term.
