Hot Topics: Environmental Ethics
Written by Roger Crisp After world chiefs and youth leaders gathered in September in New York at the United Nations Climate Action Summit, many of us as individuals are left feeling powerless and overwhelmed. Making big personal changes can appear costly in terms of happiness. And anyway, why should I bother when any difference I […]
Full ArticleIn this talk [AUDIO + SLIDES], Prof. Peter Sandøe (Philosophy, Copenhagen University), argues that, from an ethical viewpoint, gene editing is the best solution to produce hornless cattle. There are, however, regulatory hurdles. (Presented at the workshop ‘Gene Editing and Animal Welfare’, 19 Nov. 2019, Oxford – organised by Adam Shriver, Katrien Devolder, and The […]
Full ArticleWritten by Doug McConnell Everywhere we look environmentalists are being exposed as hypocrites. But is this relevant to the arguments these environmentalists are making and, if not, how can we improve the quality of public debate on environmental issues? In August, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle used 4 private jet flights over 11 days while […]
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by Keisha Ray, Ph.D.
The story of Flint, Michigan’s water crisis, beginning in 2014 is a story that most people are familiar with.…
Full ArticleBusiness Ethics Johnson & Johnson Ordered to Pay $572 Million in Landmark Opioid Case In the first of many legal battles to determine responsibility for the opioid crises in the United States, pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay over half a billion dollars in damages by the state of Oklahoma. “Johnson & […]
Full ArticleBusiness Ethics Johnson & Johnson Ordered to Pay $572 Million in Landmark Opioid Case In the first of many legal battles to determine responsibility for the opioid crises in the United States, pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay over half a billion dollars in damages by the state of Oklahoma. “Johnson & […]
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by Craig Klugman, Ph.D.
… Full Article“I’ve always wanted to try and ensure that, even before having a child and hoping to have children…Two, maximum!
The idea of using a meat tax to improve human health and protect the environment has been getting a fair amount of attention from prominent scientists in the media. Professor Mike Rayner was quoted last year as saying, “I would like to see a tax on red meat and meat products. We need incentives to […]
Full ArticleBy Charles Foster Some odd alliances are being forged in this strange new world, I well remember, a few years ago, the open hostility shown by dreadlocked, shamanic, eco-warriors towards the Abrahamic monotheisms. They’d spit when they passed a church. The rhetoric of their distaste was predictable. The very notion of a creed was anathema […]
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The following post can also be found in the October 2018
issue of the American Journal of Bioethics.
by Ariadne Nichol and David Magnus, Ph.D.…
Full ArticleOne Health, Bioethics, and Nonhuman Ethics
Ethical Dilemmas in Protecting Susceptible Subpopulations From Environmental Health Risks: Liberty, Utility, Fairness, and Accountability for Reasonableness
A Bridge Back to the Future: Public Health Ethics, Bioethics, and Environmental Ethics
We Can and Must Rebuild the Bridges of Interdisciplinary Bioethics
An international team of scientists is conducting a controversial experiment in Italy. The experiment is designed to test genetically modified mosquitoes that researchers hope could provide a powerful new weapon to fight malaria, which remains one of the world’s greatest scourges.
Full ArticleThe two-week-old shutdown has halted one of the federal government’s most important public health activities, the inspections of chemical factories, power plants, oil refineries, water treatment plants, and thousands of other industrial sites for pollution violations.
The Environmental Protection Agency has furloughed most of its roughly 600 pollution inspectors and other workers who monitor compliance with environmental laws. Those scientists, engineers and analysts are responsible for detecting violations that endanger human health, as they did, for example during an August 2018 airborne inspection that found that oil and gas fields in Karnes County, Tex., were leaking illegal levels of chemicals into the atmosphere, in violation of the Clean Air Act.
Full ArticleResearchers used a gene editing tool, CRISPR, to wipe out a population of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in the lab. Questions remain about how releasing this technology into the wild would impact the environment.
Full ArticleNearly four decades of global temperature data collected by satellites reveal the atmospheric fingerprint of climate change.
Full ArticleHawaii’s governor David Ige is expected to sign the world’s first ban on the sale of sunscreens containing the chemicals oxybenzone and octinoxate this week. The state is banning the products because of concerns they may be harming one of the state’s biggest attractions — coral reefs. While it doesn’t kick in until 2021, the move is already prompting a public health pushback.
Full ArticleLab-grown chicken, beef, and duck products are edging toward the U.S. market—despite enduring confusion about how they’ll be regulated. But language buried in a draft spending bill released by a U.S. House of Representatives appropriations panel this week suggests some lawmakers are eager to get rules in place. A one-sentence proposal in the bill would put the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in charge of regulating products made from the cells of livestock or poultry, and instructs the agency to issue rules about how it will oversee their manufacture and labeling.
Full ArticleThey concluded that the genetic change that produced spring-run Chinook occurred only once in the species’s history. And new data published on 29 April on bioRxiv show that in rivers where spring runs disappeared decades ago, less than 1% of the remaining fish carry a copy of the early migration version of the gene. The scarcity of that gene makes it very unlikely a spring run will reappear once lost.
Full ArticleThe world’s leading climate science body is expected to decide this week on whether to establish a new task force on promoting gender equity within the male-dominated group. The move comes on the heels of a study finding that although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has increased the proportion of women involved in writing its authoritative reports, barriers to participation remain.
Full ArticleClimate change is already affecting the health of populations around the world, but things are set to get worse if adequate changes aren’t made, according to an international consortium of climate experts. Fueling the impact is the fact that more than 2,100 cities globally exceed recommended levels of atmospheric particulate matter.
Biotech researchers here are celebrating the long-awaited passage of a bill this week that clears the way for large-scale field tests and commercial release of genetically modified (GM) crops. Uganda, with several engineered varieties waiting in the wings, is expected to join a handful of other African nations moving quickly to bring homegrown GM foods to the market.
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