ABSTRACT

The effect of reducing numbers of sexual partners can be conceived both as a way of protecting the individual and of protecting the group. This chapter describes ideas about the common good, and illustrates their implications for the methods and ethics of HIV prevention. It explores the reasons why this common good approach is still beset with problems and proposes a way in which it might be taken forward. D. E. Beauchamp has described the common good in public health as referring to the welfare of individuals considered as a group: the body politic. His view draws on traditions which see the good of society as more than the sum of individual goods, and where that good is expressed through practices. It is important to note that effective changes incorporating this common good approach entailed more than exhortations to care for each other and the community.