Philosophy Commons^™

The Green Staff Of Asclepius: Envisioning Sustainable Medicine, Jason Lee Fishel

Doctoral Dissertations

To make society sustainable our institutions must also become sustainable. As an institution, health care contributes to environmental degradation. While unsurprising, contributions to environmental degradation increase risk factors for disease and illness, effectively frustrating the goals of medicine. To find ways to make health care sustainable I begin by reviewing the literature on sustainability from within environmental ethics and two previous attempts at envisioning sustainable health care in order to learn what to include in a vision of sustainable health care. Then I examine problems specific to making medicine sustainable by investigating how sustainability might affect the principles of medicine. …

In Sickness And In Health: Analyzing The Ethical Limits Of The Marriage Between Health Care And The Market In The United States, Thomas D Harter

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation aims to determine what should be the appropriate base ethical limits of health care markets in the United States. I argue that because we do not value health care goods and services as commodities, treating them as commodities available for market sale can only be ethical when health care markets accord with at least the principles of honesty, respect for autonomy, and increased access to essential health care goods and services.

I begin by establishing the theoretical foundation of my argument by expositing three theories of commodification and ethical markets that critically examine the relationship of goods to …