Abstract
Several recent calls have been made for bioethics to grapple seriously with varieties of “nonhuman ethics,” including animal ethics and environmental ethics. Bioethics traditionally treats clinical and research ethics, and apart from animal experimentation, nonhuman ethics is often seen as outside its purview. Some hope this will change. Lisa Lee argued recently in the American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB) that public health ethics might “reconnect biomedical ethics and environmental ethics … to improve our collective experience on this planet.” Angus Dawson argues that bioethics requires a philosophical reinvigoration that might be gained by examining “medicine in the broadest sense, the life sciences, and aspects of the environment, animals and agriculture.” Such appeals recall Van Rensselaer Potter’s early conception of bioethics as strongly inclusive of nonhuman ethics.