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1 – 10 of over 19000The modern human rights movement, like American bioethics, was born from the devastation of World War II. The multinational trial of the major Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg…
Abstract
The modern human rights movement, like American bioethics, was born from the devastation of World War II. The multinational trial of the major Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg following World War II was held on the premise that there is a higher law of humanity (derived from natural law rules based on an understanding of the essential nature of humans), and that individuals may be properly tried for violating that law. Universal criminal law includes crimes against humanity, such as murder, genocide, torture, and slavery. Obeying the orders of superiors is no defense: the state cannot shield its agents from prosecution for crimes against humanity.
This chapter examines the historical development of different conceptions of health among environmental activists in the postwar United States.
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter examines the historical development of different conceptions of health among environmental activists in the postwar United States.
Methodology/approach
The historical analysis combines archival research with oral history interviews.
Findings
This study argues that applications of “health” to describe the environment are more diverse than generally acknowledged, and that environmental activists were at the forefront of connecting the two terms within broader public discourse.
Originality/value of chapter
This study provides a historical context for understanding the contemporary diversity of perspectives on the links between ecology and health. It illustrates the cross-fertilization between scientists, philosophers, and environmental activists in the 1970s that led to this contemporary diversity.
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This chapter reviews factors responsible for climate change, impacts of the change on animal health, zoonotic diseases, and their linkage with One-Health program.
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter reviews factors responsible for climate change, impacts of the change on animal health, zoonotic diseases, and their linkage with One-Health program.
Design/methodology/approach
This chapter is based on the available literature related to climate change and its effect on animal health and production from different points. The causes and change forcers of climate change, direct and indirect effects of the change on animal health management, host–pathogen–vector interaction, and zoonotic diseases are included. Inter-linkage between climate change and One-Health program are also assessed.
Findings
Beside natural causes of climatic change, greenhouse gases are increasing due to human activities, causing global climate changes which have direct and indirect animal health and production performance impacts. The direct impacts are increased ambient temperature, floods, and droughts, while the indirect are reduced availability of water and food. The change and effect also promote diseases spread, increase survival and availability of the pathogen and its intermediate vector host, responsible for distribution and prevalence of tremendous zoonotic, infectious, and vector-borne diseases. The adverse effect on the biodiversity, distribution of animals and micro flora, genetic makeup of microbials which may lead to emerging and re-emerging disease and their outbreaks make the strong linkage between climate change and One-Health.
Practical implications
Global climate change is receiving increasing international attention where international organizations are increasing their focus on tackling the health impacts. Thus, there is a need for parallel mitigation of climate change and animal diseases in a global form.
Originality/value
Most research on climate change is limited to environmental protection, however this chapter provides a nexus between climate change, animal health, livestock production, and the One-Health program for better livelihood.
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The goal of this chapter is to cultivate interest in the societal dynamic of ability expectations and ableism, a dynamic first thematized by the disabled people rights movement…
Abstract
Purpose
The goal of this chapter is to cultivate interest in the societal dynamic of ability expectations and ableism, a dynamic first thematized by the disabled people rights movement but which is also broadly applicable to the study of the relationship between humans, animals, and environments. Another aim of this chapter is to think about disabled people within ecosystem approaches to health through the ableism framework and to show that insights gained from disability studies are applicable to a broader study of health within contexts of environmental degradation. Building from this approach, the reader is invited to consider the utility of the conceptual framework of eco-ability “expectations” and eco-ableism as a way to understand health within coupled social-ecological systems.
Methodology/approach
This chapter uses an ability expectation and ableism lens and a disability studies and ability studies approach to analyze the relationship between humans, animals, and environments.
Findings
Certain ability expectations and ableism are responsible for (a) the invisibility of disabled people in ecological health discourses; (b) the standoff between anthropocentric and biocentric/ecocentric approaches to health; and (c) the application of scientific and technological advancements to address problems arising out of current relationships between humans, animals, and environments.
Originality/value of chapter
The reader is introduced to the concepts of ableism and eco-ableism, which have not yet been used in EcoHealth discourses and flags the need for further engagement with disability issues within the field.
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Christina Dokter, Reza Nassiri and James Trosko
One Health is defined as an approach of integrating animal, human, and environmental health to mitigate diseases. One Health promotes public health by studying all factors, such…
Abstract
One Health is defined as an approach of integrating animal, human, and environmental health to mitigate diseases. One Health promotes public health by studying all factors, such as agriculture, food, and water security, mechanisms of toxicity and pathogenesis of acute and chronic diseases, sociology, economics, and ecosystem health (to name a few). Such an approach is essential because human, animal, and ecosystem health are inextricably linked; therefore, with this One Health approach, we are called to work together to promote, improve, and defend the health and well-being of all by enhancing cooperation and collaboration between physicians, veterinarians social scientists, economists, psychologists, legal professionals, philosophers, and other scientific health and environmental professionals. As such, the One Health movement and approach is a growing vision in global health and is gaining increasing recognition by national and international institutions, organizations, stakeholders, NGOs, and health policymakers. Likewise, the role of world-class universities is pivotal in discovering One Health scientific knowledge and translating them to policy and evidence-based practices. Universities have responsibilities to train future professionals capable of solving global health issues through interdisciplinary scientific knowledge, integrative approaches to teaching, research collaboration, community linkages, and leadership. This chapter discusses the importance of One Health and the role of higher education institutions’ One Health partnerships to improve global health.
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This chapter explores the rise in genetic approaches to health disparities at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter explores the rise in genetic approaches to health disparities at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Methodology/approach
Analysis of public health policies, genome project records, ethnography of project leaders and leading genetic epidemiologists, and news coverage of international projects demonstrates how the study of health disparities and genetic causes of health simultaneously took hold just as the new field of genomics and matters of racial inequality became a global priority for biomedical science and public health.
Findings
As the U.S. federal government created policies to implement racial inclusion standards, international genome projects seized the study race, and diseases that exhibit disparities by race. Genomic leaders made health disparities research a central feature of their science. However, recent attempts to move toward analysis of gene-environment interactions in health and disease have proven insufficient in addressing sociological contributors to health disparities. In place of in-depth analyses of environmental causes, pharmacogenomics drugs, diagnostics, and inclusion in sequencing projects have become the frontline solutions to health disparities.
Originality/value
The chapter argues that genetic forms of medicalization and racialization have taken hold over science and public health around the world, thereby engendering a divestment from sociological approaches that do not align with the expansion of genomic science. The chapter thus contributes to critical discussions in the social and health sciences about the fundamental processes of medicalization, racialization, and geneticization in contemporary society.
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A crucial contemporary public health issue is the construction and contestation of the relevance of the natural world to human health.
Abstract
Purpose
A crucial contemporary public health issue is the construction and contestation of the relevance of the natural world to human health.
Approach
Taking a critical approach, this chapter examines how the natural environment as a health determinant is positioned in relation to the ‘social’ within social theory generally and social epidemiological studies of health, illness and disease specifically.
Findings
– This study shows how current constructions of social and natural environmental health drivers contour social approaches to the study of health and proposes an integrated social-ecological approach for generating new contributions of social epidemiology to research on environmentally driven health injuries.
Originality
– The research breaks ground for further social scientific studies of health and the environment and in particular substantiates the call for an extended notion of the ‘environment’ using ecological principles. Methodologically, the interdisciplinary reach of this research draws attention to the tensions that arise when working across the medical, natural and social sciences.
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Rebecca Moran, Julie Hollenbeck and Cassandra Phoenix
This chapter proposes a way to deepen our understanding of the health impacts of climate change. It explores how and why individuals and communities may experience the climate…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter proposes a way to deepen our understanding of the health impacts of climate change. It explores how and why individuals and communities may experience the climate change-human health interface in different ways.
Design/methodology/approach
We suggest that the concepts of structural vulnerability and narrative inquiry can provide a thick (ethnographic) description of how and why individuals and communities experience and give meaning to the health impacts of climate change. We begin by defining the two concepts before bringing them together to explore the relationship between climate change and health.
Findings
The combination of these two concepts offers the potential to advance our knowledge in two key ways. Firstly, they facilitate a critical and interpretive approach to both the notion of agency and the public health paradigm of the ‘rational-actor’. Secondly, they reveal how vulnerability to climate change is embodied at the level of the mundane and everyday.
Social implications
These concepts, when applied to the climate change–human health interface, can help demonstrate how vulnerability is often a social construction, and, with sufficient political will, may be ameliorated. We see the combination of the concepts discussed here as an opportunity for research to address inequality and justice.
Originality/value
This paper takes two innovative and established concepts in medical anthropology (structural vulnerability) and social science (narrative inquiry) and invites their application to our understanding of climate change and human health. Research analysed via these concepts will provide a clearer understanding of the impacts of climate change and experiences of vulnerability.