Introduction: International Public Health: Morality, Politics, Poverty, War, Disease

This volume of original chapters follows on the well-regarded Public Health Policy and Ethics (Dordrecht: Kluwer/Springer 2004). What is similar about this volume to its predecessor is the general position that public health is more inclusive than just epidemiology concerning various vicious microbes and sanitation. There are many threats to public health and these include all the usual suspects: clean water, sanitation, and disease control (all included here). But this volume also includes other sorts of threats. These include human rights violations and unfairness in the allocation of the basic goods of human agency such as health care and the opportunity to protect one’s self against threats against the same. The time is the present. The place is the whole world. There is a conscious crafting of chapters and argumentation to the global stage. However, that said, each issue must be repeated within the context of individual countries. For purposes of clarity, I would suggest that readers think about two sorts of countries in the world: wealthy countries (those able to provide the basic goods necessary for action, including health care) and subsistent societies (those in which there are substantial portions of the population at risk for disease and starvation because the country simply does not have the resources to begin to help all its citizens). I have argued elsewhere that these two sorts of countries should be measured on a different scale of moral “ought”—because of the issue of “can.” And that the wealthier countries should assist their more indigent neighbors in their quest for fair economic development. The various chapters in this volume address financial feasibility along with the strength of human rights claims. But let us be clear about this: the claim is not simply that public health is wider than infectious disease and sanitation—but that in any issue that affects the general community, a plurality of considerations should be brought forth under the guiding principle of ethics. Pure science/medicine needs a supporting principle and that is the inclusive ethical/social/political considerations brought forth in this volume.