Rhyddhi Chakraborty

While the causes of human-animal conflict are numerous, many are intertwined with food production systems and the wildlife trade. The emergence and spread of Covid-19 exemplify this. Indeed, the wildlife population in South Asian countries has seen an increase in the risk of both human and nonhuman death in recent months, and as the economy slows, the search for food and extra income will intensify, negatively impacting wildlife. This paper aims to address some of the ethical issues concerning our treatment of nonhuman creatures and the environment in relation to the global food system and wildlife trade following the Covid-19 crisis.

This paper argues that Zika virus infection has its ethical implications beyond the reproductive health of women. It claims that Zika virus infection like public health emergency exposes the underlying health determinants and health status of women. Therefore, ethical mitigation of Zika like public health emergencies should consider these underlying health determinants and health status of women. For, undermining and overlooking these underlying determinants and health status of women, during the public health emergencies, enhance the health inequities. The recent Zika virus infection in Brazil has triggered different ethics consultation and has prompted to outline ethical recommendations. However, the recommendations have either focused on the reproductive health of women or on the core strategies of public health emergency. Considering this as a gap in perspective to prepare for Zika like public health emergencies, this paper argues that it is the underlying holistic health of women, precisely, health capability, which should be given due ethical consideration. Finally, the paper concludes highlighting the fact that focusing on the holistic health of the women during Zika like public health emergencies and beyond can bring in long-term benefits for global health equity.

Tuberculosis, caused by bacteria, usually affects the lung. Being airborne, TB has been one of the world’s deadliest communicable diseases. In spite of being curable and preventable, the disease has always been a continuous threat to human population. Moreover, there are cases of multidrug resistant, extremely drug resistant as well as HIV associated forms. Recognizing this grave threat, the World Health Organization urged every country to have a national program for tuberculosis prevention and control. After incidences of involuntary detentions of people with suspected TB in some places, WHO also recommended that national TB prevention programs should incorporate ethical considerations in them. Specifically, it prescribed that human rights and social justice issues should be given due considerations. Studies suggest that India, following the international recommendations, has rolled down a national program to prevent and control TB cases in the country. However, neither is there much consideration of ethics in it, nor there is any pronounced effort to include social justice issues. The present paper investigates how the inclusion of elements from social justice theory can actually help India’s TB program to address the issue of equitable protection. Specifically, it shows how insights from JP Ruger’s ‘Health Capability Paradigm’ can help India’s TB strategies to render equitable protection by addressing health inequities.

Public health system always requires an advanced level of awareness and a comprehensive policy. However, as is often the case, expectations and actualities do not match. In order to understand the situation, planning and other related initiatives, and to assess the adequacy in terms of the expectations borne out of experiences, the papers in this volume detailed the issues and the need of ethics in formulating the policies and contributing in the vision of the development of the country. In order to have a comprehensive ethical policy and planning, a concern for the initiatives and development deep down in the policy formation is required. Despite the fact that there is need of ethics in such formulation, the need is yet to be acknowledged in the relevant policy documents. The five papers in the volume emphasise such need.

With its origin in the Hippocrates Oath (5th-3rd Century BC), The Nuremberg Codes (1947), and The Declaration of Helsinki (1964), medical ethics set the rules of the professional conducts for the physicians and other medical specialists. It amounts to the deployment of bioethical concepts, values (Autonomy, Non-maleficence, Beneficence, and Justice) and methods within medical set up to suggest the day-to-day decision-making procedures by combining theory and practice. It is a multidisciplinary study as it seeks to develop a set of guidelines for moral decision-making utilizing the resources of not only medicine and biology, but also of law, philosophy, theology, and the social sciences. As the branch of Bioethics, it investigates the complex ethical problems which arise for human life and society from sophisticated medical-technological usages and biological practices. The problems specifically include the nature and distribution of treatment and medical resources, the informed consent and authority of the patient, the physician and others involved in the medical practices, the scope and limits of confidentiality, the limits of acceptable intervention and experimentation, and the propriety of research involving humans and their applications. It also deals with the questions of moral dimensions and professional responsibilities involving all forms of ‘life-related’ issues such as research involving foetal tissues, withdrawal of life-sustaining medical treatment, issues over death, prenatal diagnosis and abortion, the storage of frozen embryos. Medical ethics is intricately linked to the culture and glocal values. To emphasise such aspect, the following papers come together to enrich this volume.

Cambridge online dictionary offers the meaning of the noun term “environment” as the air, water, and land in or on which humans, animals, and plants reside1. The environment can also be mixture of factors that influence both organic and inorganic ecosystems and their shared co-existence. This co-existence is the last idea that is given significance in the sophisticated and busy life styles of the modern day. In other words, in our own attitudes lies a large portion of causal conditions for outward environmental disruptions and imbalances. The challenges we face globally have their origin in local settings, the threats we face at the surface level of our location have their origins at 'deep level' in our very own way of living, in the very way of our behaviour towards others. With this absence of senses, species of human beings not only put themselves at risk, but also put other species of life in danger all over the world. It can be said that the ecological sufferings what we are experiencing today are seemed to have deep roots in anthropocentric views about the dominion of humans on earth. Without major societal changes, including changes in the habits of human beings, these exploitative, consumerist practices cannot be resolved 2. The papers in this issue on Environmental Ethics emphasize the need of the sense of morality towards the surrounding environment.