Environmental ethics is done by philosophers operating within the strict canons of the discipline. Environmental ethics has been pursued as the traditional ethics of pure reason. Real bioethics is not pure, traditional, reasoning ethics. Real bioethics is done by realistic scientists1 and concerned biologists and physicians who have an intuition to help build a "Bridge to the Future,"2 whether of not their effort is labeled " bioethics." Among this cohort is Physicians for Social Responsibility and the editors of their new (...) journal, Medicine and Global Survival.3 These people are not professional ethicists. As realists they see the survival and well-being of the human species as a matter of organizational morality—a civic society directed to the "common good" worldwide, as soon as possible, and with a long-range perspective. Real bioethics is not merely biocentric or merely anthropocentric. Instead, real bioethics calls for an idealistic mix of biocentrism and the kind of humanism that is concerned with the needs, interests, and welfare of human beings, or, in other words, an enlightened or realistic anthropocentrism that acknowledges the central role of the biosphere in the continued existence and "common good" of the human species, as previously discussed in connection with global bioethics,4 a subject foreign to environmental ethicists. From any point of view, real bioethics falls in the context of the ideals of two Wisconsin professors who lived in the early part of the twentieth century, Aldo Leopold and Max Otto, as will be discussed later. (shrink)

The Report's editorial mandate is both to examine issues of current importance and to invite bioethics to broaden the range of issues it probes. Thus along with articles exploring the relationship between patients and doctors, or health policy, or any of the myriad other familiar concerns of ethics in medicine, from time to time the Report has published articles about public health, animal experimentation, or “environmental ethics” broadly construed. The most recent was the special supplement Nature, Polis, Ethics in the (...) November‐December (1998) issue. Some, of course, have argued that “bio‐ethics” ought always to encompass concern for issues beyond the bedside. When the biologist Van Rensselaer Potter proposed the term bioethics nearly thirty years ago, the field he had in mind lay at the intersection of ethics and the biological sciences in general. In light especially of Nature, Polis, Ethics's call for a substantive “humans‐nature ethics” it seems appropriate, therefore, to invite one of the earliest proponents of a generous understanding of bioethics to reflect on the character of the field and the questions with which it should grapple. Below Potter and colleague Peter Whitehouse share their thoughts on this most interdisciplinary of disciplines. —B‐JC, GK. (shrink)

When Van Rensselaer Potter coined the English word “bioethics”, he envisioned a field that would bring together biological understanding and ethical values to address global environmental problems. Following Potter’s broad vision of bioethics, I explore ethical ideas that we need to address climate change. However, I develop and emphasize ideas about justice and responsibility in ways that Potter did not. At key points, I contrast the ideas that I develop with those in Potter’s work, but (...) I try to avoid scholarly debates and stay focused on the practical task: developing ideas to help us address climate change. To begin, I describe the problem of climate change. Then I show how it raises deep and serious issues of justice. Since the issues of justice are relatively clear and compelling, I proceed to focus attention on issues of responsibility – on why and how to respond to the structural injustices of climate change. I also note how my emphasis on justice and responsibility raises two new issues. To conclude, I mention the role of ecological citizens in bringing about social change. (shrink)

Van Rensselaer Potter was the first voice to utter the word “bioethics,” yet he is too little appreciated by the bioethics community. My expectations for my first visit with Professor Van Rensselaer Potter were primed by conversations with leaders and historians of the field of biomedical ethics, including Warren Reich, Al Jonsen, and David Thomasma. When mentioning my interest in environmental ethics and my concerns for the current state of biomedical ethics, I was told that I (...) must meet Van. On my first visit to Madison, Wisconsin, Van met me at the McArdle Laboratories for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin, where he spent essentially his entire academic career as a basic oncological researcher. He was dressed informally and driving a rusting1984 Subaru station wagon with a license plate that read YES ZPG. We spent this first portion of our visit at the Institute where he is an Emeritus Professor and has contributed to understanding cancer metabolism as recognized by his election to the National Academy of Sciences. However, Van felt most at home in his shack located outside Madison. This country retreat included a rather primitive hut surrounded by acres of property owned by the family. I felt at the heart of Van's world when I sat in one of a pair of inexpensive plastic outdoor chairs in a particularly secluded part of the woods on the property, the place where Van himself communed with nature. (shrink)

I first met Van Potter nearly 40 years ago when I was 17 and entering the University of Wisconsin as a new freshman. During the summer of 1963, Van was a participant in a series of evening seminars designed to familiarize premed students to the community at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. I was immediately struck by Van's unique ability to cut straight to the core of virtually any issue having to do with biomedicine. As with many of (...) his students, I quickly found myself in a father-son relationship of both our making. Van has been a source of inspiration and guidance to me ever since. (shrink)

Mindful of how the history of bioethics has often been presented, we explore the background, contributions, and influence of Van Rensselaer Potter on the roots of bioethics. In the last few decades, dozens of papers have been written and published, including several doctoral theses and defenses on V. R. Potter‘s concept of bioethics. In those works, the context of the emergence of Potter’s bioethics has sometimes been suggested, but never analyzed thoroughly. We identify seven pillars of (...) influence for Van Rensselaer Potter’s bioethical credo, drawing on several facts from the rich cultural heritage of Wisconsin, where Potter had lived and worked for the most part of his life. (shrink)

This study explores the role that news coverage plays in the allocation of Japanese development aid. Conceptually, it is expected that democratic foreign policy officials, including those working in bureaucratic governmental structures will try to match the magnitude of their actions with what they expect is the public's perception of the importance of the recipient. News media salience serves an easily accessible indicator of that domestic political importance and, in the case of foreign aid, this suggests that higher levels of (...) news coverage of a less-developed country will lead to higher aid commitments. The statistical analysis demonstrates that the level of news coverage is a statistically significant factor in Japanese aid distributions. More significantly, the analysis demonstrates that separating grant aid from other forms of aid is critical for the empirical examination of the determinants of Japanese aid. (shrink)

In 1970 Van Rensselaer Potter was the first to use the term "bioethics" in a publication to advocate the development of a new discipline to address the basic problems of human flourishing. This article analyzes Potter's notion of bioethics in order to understand its origins, sources, and substance. In early publications, Potter conceptualized bioethics as a bridge: between present and future, nature and culture, science and values, and finally between humankind and nature. In later publications, disappointed (...) by a predominant focus on individual and medical issues, and with a wish to underscore the need for a broader perspective, Potter introduced the new term "global bioethics," meant to transcend ethics specialties and integrate them into a new interdisciplinary endeavor to address global problems. A growing interest in global bioethics today means that Potter's original insights are more timely than ever. (shrink)

Van Rensselaer Potter (1911-2001), le biologiste à l’origine du terme « bioéthique » dans les écrits nord-américains, considère que « real bioethics falls in the context of the ideals of […] Aldo Leopold », un forestier, philosophe et poète ayant marqué le XXe siècle. Associer Leopold à Potter a pour effet de placer la bioéthique dans la famille des éthiques de l’environnement, ce qui la différencie du sens conventionnel retenu en médecine et en recherche depuis le Rapport (...) Belmont (1979), une déclaration ayant propulsé l’institutionnalisation de la bioéthique en Amérique du Nord. Cependant, diviser la bioéthique entre le médical et l’environnemental est réducteur. Potter propose au contraire une bioéthique globale s’intéressant aux enjeux situés à leur interface, dont ceux concernant la terre, la vie sauvage, la surpopulation, la consommation, etc. Cet article vise à amorcer un nouveau chantier d’analyse de la pensée de Potter en s’appuyant sur l’héritage de Leopold en biologie. Une synthèse de cette vision potterienne est proposée de manière à considérer son œuvre comme un tout cohérent s’intégrant aux grands débats qui transcendent les XXe et XXIe siècles. Sa vision apparaît comme une sagesse collective et prospective sous la forme d’une science de la survie et d’un code de bioéthique. Dépassant l’éthique de l’environnement, son association avec Leopold offre un modèle de la complexité s’imposant comme cas indissociable du contexte qui l’englobe, en améliorant nos façons d’intervenir en pratique dans un monde en constante transformation, à titre de gouvernance adaptative et de sagesse de la responsabilité. (shrink)

As constantes mudanças da sociedade contemporânea, principalmente relacionadas ao desenvolvimento do progresso tecnocientífico, tem exigido uma contínua reinvenção da sociedade para acompanhar essas mudanças. Essas transformações têm impactado a totalidade da vida humana, e da biosfera. Se o futuro da natureza humana e da vida da biosfera eram considerados certos, não exigindo a prática de princípios específicos para que isso pudesse continuar a existir, Van Rensselaer Potter (1911-2001) com sua proposta de uma bioética global, e Edgar Morin (1921- (...) atual) com sua teoria da complexidade, alertam-nos de que é preciso buscar novos saberes à educação para garantir a existência futura. Diante dessa realidade marcada pelo acelerado progresso da ciência e da tecnologia, que por estar dissociada do mundo do mundo dos valores tem ameaçado a existência da vida em geral no futuro, esta pesquisa quer investigar como a bioética global de Potter faz interface com a teoria da complexidade de Edgar Morin, em vista de novos saberes à educação do futuro, que possibilite a sobrevivência futura da vida humana e da biosfera? Trata-se de uma pesquisa bibliográfica, de caráter teórico conceitual, a partir das principais obras dos autores em foco, e de seus comentadores. Embora o cientista e o sociólogo tenham problematizado em realidades distintas, ambos apresentam um núcleo de preocupações em comum que ameaçam a vida humana e da biosfera no futuro. Por isso, propõem novos saberes à educação, saberes de um novo tipo, que vão além de uma simples disciplina dentro de um modelo de pensar. Novos saberes que privilegiem o a construção de pontes entre as ciências com as humanidades, o diálogo interdisciplinar, a aproximação das questões ético-políticas em vista de uma antropoética (Morin) e de uma educação bioético-política comprometida com a sobrevivência futura da humanidade (Potter). (shrink)

Resumo: As grandes corporações de comunicação, no Brasil, operam como construtoras de sentidos, por meio de narrativas sintonizadas com os interesses de grupos e atores sociais, com desprezo para as demandas e os direitos dos setores populares. Uma prática semelhante de comunicação foi vivenciada por Frantz Fanon, na África. No entanto, o ativista conseguiu fazer da sua práxis jornalística um instrumento a serviço da justiça e da libertação de povos africanos oprimidos. Essa prática libertária de Fanon identifica-se com os ideais (...) da bioética global, criada posteriormente por Van Rensselaer Potter. Frente a esse cenário, esta reflexão quer investigar em que sentido a práxis jornalística de Fanon, durante a guerra de libertação argelina, em busca de justiça social e de libertação, se identifica com os fundamentos da bioética global proposta posteriormente por Potter. A análise consiste numa argumentação de caráter analítico-dedutivo. Se, com a bioética global, Potter procurou restaurar um sentido humano da práxis científica e tecnológica, Fanon buscou esse objetivo como comunicador social e médico.: The big communication corporations of Brazil operate as constructers of meaning trough syntonized narratives in behalf of groups and social players, and with contempt for the rights and demands of popular sectors. A similar communication practice was experienced by Frantz Fanon in Africa. However, the activist was able to make an instrument in service of justice and liberation of oppressed African people from his journalistic practice. This libertarian practice of Fanon identifies oneself with the subsequently created global bioethics of Van Rensselaer Potter. In the face of this scenario, this reflection wants to investigate in what sense the journalistc praxis of Fanon during the Argelian Revolution, in pursuit of social justice and liberation, identifies itself with the global bioethics principles later proposed by Potter? The analyses consists in an anaclitic deductive character. If with global bioethci Potter searched to restore a human sense of the technological and scientific praxis, Fanon seeked this goal as an social communicator and physician. (shrink)

The multiple emergencies of global heating require bioethicists to embrace the dormant, comprehensive bioethics legacy of Van Rensselaer Potter, moving beyond the current narrower focus of the field on medicine and health care. We recommend readings that expand the core literature of bioethics to address key environmental issues. These are Jessica Pierce and Andrew Jameton's The Ethics of Environmentally Responsible Health Care; Dale Jamieson's Reason in a Dark Time; and David Wallace‐Well's The Uninhabitable Earth. Because efforts to mitigate (...) climate disasters are likely to be only partially successful, we also recommend the teachings of late Roman Stoicism and core texts of Buddhism, which provide ethical wisdom likely to be needed in the multiple crises of the Anthropocene. (shrink)

In this paper, we view creativity through the lens of innovation, a concept familiar to archaeologists across a range of contexts and theoretical perspectives. Most attempts to understand ancient innovation thus far, we argue, have been limited by their lack of capacity to cope with the multiple scales of innovation: Those that track widespread changes, like the beginnings of metallurgy, fail to account for the changes experiences by individual craftspeople; those that do justice to the details of the micro-scale, with (...) ‘thick’ description, cannot well explain the regional adoption of new practices. Here we develop an intermediary position, at the meso-scale, which we hope can serve to integrate these different scales. It is based on the notions that all innovation entails learning and that learning is very often supported at this meso-scale, through ‘communities of practice’. Drawing on the ethno-archaeological literature in particular, we emphasise how learning is a process of embodied cognition. Our archaeological case study is then drawn from the Bronze Age east Mediterranean, where a striking innovation in pottery making — the use of rotative kinetic energy via the potter’s wheel — sees a very uneven uptake from region to region over the course of many centuries. We propose certain differences in community organization from one region to another that might account for such variation in the adoption of an innovation, with the island of Crete in particular seeing a much more stable trajectory of adoption than many of its neighbouring areas. (shrink)

For Van Rensselaer Potter (1911–2001), Global Bio-Ethics is about building on the legacy of Aldo Leopold (1887–1948), one of the most notable forest managers of the twentieth century who brought to light the importance of pragmatism in the sciences and showed us a new way to proceed with environmental ethics. Following Richard Huxtable and Jonathan Ives's methodological 'Framework for Empirical Bioethics Research Projects' called 'Mapping, framing, shaping,' published in BMC Medicine Ethics (2019)), we propose operationalizing a framework for (...) Global Bio-Ethics by hybridizing approaches in empirical bioethics and ecosystem management. We explain this framework using the metaphor of forest management. This mixed approach is articulated through three phases: (1) mapping the “landscape” to build a working theory, (2) framing the “scene” to prepare the fieldwork, and (3) shaping bioethics “tools” to stimulate cooperation. Applying this methodology, an adaptive management cycle is outlined to help ensure that political processes are sustainable and socially acceptable, still based on strategic and ethical thinking, but also capable of reshaping failing policies. (shrink)

Van Rensselaer Potter was an American biochemist who worked in the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In 1970, in an article in this journal, Potter coined the term bioethics to combine a new discipline that combines biological knowledge with ethics. Potter wrote, “Ethical values cannot be separated from biological facts” (p. 127). His conception was broad-ranging: “We are in great need of a land ethic, a wild-life ethic, a population (...) ethic, a consumption ethic, an urban ethic, an international ethic, a geriatric ethic, and so on. All of these problems call for actions that are based on values and biological facts. All of them involve bioethics, and survival of the .. (shrink)

The article by Potter and Rif S. El-Mallakh read empathically, invokes a sense of fulfilment in their experiences, serving as inspiration for others to learn and practice ethics better. It describes their growth that has culminated to this sense of fulfilment and inspirational dignity. Crucial for this desirable growth has been, I want to highlight, their good investment in virtuous relationships and diligent processes. I also highlight from their article a potential conceptual restriction to growing in our learning and (...) practicing of ethics. That is, the restriction that occurs when blinded by too narrow a view on what ethics is about or where its emphasis is supposed to be. (shrink)

Dr. Van Rensselaer Potter was always quick to point out that a viable ethics must be based upon a viable scientific knowledge base. The implications are clear, that a global ethics must be based upon a global philosophy. The present discussion provides the conceptual basis for a Global Philosophy, specifically a global theology with criteria of belief for a mature Global Bioethics.

About 1970, Van Rensselaer Potter coined the term bioethics to bring under one heading broad questions of human survival, environment, and biology. In 1971, Potter outlined a statement of principles that linked the ethics of the biological sciences with the ethics of environmental concern. Regrettably, the field that adopted his rubric bioethics immediately diverged from Potter’s interests. Bioethics has become for the most part identified with medical ethics or health care ethics and in so doing has (...) developed few ethical principles and analyses in relationship to environmental ethics. Similarly, environmental ethics seldom touches on clinical or health care issues, even though the field of environmental health has grown greatly in recent decades. It is the purpose of this article to indicate briefly some of the topics that could be treated effectively as part of a project to reconnect medical ethics and environmental ethics into what may be called sustainable bioethics. (shrink)

Contemporary biomedical ethics and environmental ethics share a common ancestry in Aldo Leopold's and Van Rensselaer Potter's initial broad visions of a connected biosphere. Over the past five decades, the two fields have become strangers. Public health ethics, a new subfield of bioethics, emerged from the belly of contemporary biomedical ethics and has evolved over the past 25 years. It has moved from its traditional concern with the tension between individual autonomy and community health to a wider focus (...) on social justice and solidarity. Public health has a broad focus that includes individual, community, and environmental health. Public health ethics attends to these broad commitments reflected in the increasing concern with the connectedness of health of individuals to the health of populations, to the health of animals, to the health of the environment; it is well situated to reconnect all three “fields” of ethics to promote a healthier planet. (shrink)