Public Health Ethics

As it seeks to protect the health of populations, public health inevitably confronts a range of critical ethical challenges. This volume brings together 25 articles that open up the terrain of the ethics of public health. It features topics such as tobacco and drug control, infectious disease, environmental and occupational disease, and more. Since public health seeks to protect the health of populations, it inevitably confronts a range of ethical challenges having to do primarily with the friction between individual freedoms and what might be perceived as governmental paternalism. This volume brings together 25 articles by leading thinkers in the field, writing on topics that concern both classic and novel problems. They open up new terrain in each area, including tobacco and drug control, infectious disease, environmental and occupational health, the effect of new genetics on the public's health, and the impact of social inequalities on patterns of morbidity and mortality. The volume editors offer a context for discussion with introductory essays for each of the book's five sections.