In this paper, the authors consider the idea of the public biobank governance framework with respect to the innovative paradigm of One Health. The One Health initiative has been defined as an integrative and interdisciplinary effort to improve the lives and well-being of human beings and non-human animals, as well as to preserve the environment. Here, we use this approach as a starting presumption with respect to institutional design. We examine the theoretical and legal framework underlying the concept of biobanking (...) that, being public orientated, is _for the public good_. We suggest that this account of research practice does not ethically correlate with One Health principles. Instead, we argue that One Health requires a model of biobanking that is based on universal goods, that is, goods that serve human beings as well as non-human animals and the environment, and which we define in detail. Our purpose is to begin a discussion on how One Health principles might be implemented in health initiatives. (shrink)

This article sketches how liberal principles can be coherently set alongside the stewardship responsibilities of regulators. It indicates how this bears on the legitimacy of public health interventions in general and interventions of the kind associated with New York City’s public health programme in particular. The key idea is that stewardship responsibilities relate to the essential infrastructural conditions for human well-being; these conditions need to be protected because they are the staging for all human activity. Liberal principles, by contrast, presuppose (...) that the basic conditions for human well-being are in place; and, given this presupposition, they present a view about how humans should live, about how they should interact and transact and about how they should flourish. Where regulators are guided by a liberal ethic, they act illegitimately if they try to dictate how individuals should lead their lives; but, acting under their stewardship jurisdiction, regulators may legitimately intervene if they are trying to protect the conditions that are essential for any kind of human life. The article concludes by suggesting that while it is a good thing that New York City’s policies provoke debate about the legitimacy of public health interventions, it is the infrastructural conditions, and not the superstructural activities, that are the regulatory priority. (shrink)

Evaluating public health measures is one of the central tasks in public health ethics. Some public health measures incur the charge that they are paternalistic in an objectionable way. In a recent intriguing contribution to this journal, Thomas Nys responds to this complaint by setting out three challenges to be met if the charge is to be made good. The first challenge is that putatively objectionable public health measures in fact preserve autonomy; the second is that autonomy is not undermined (...) by measures that are the upshot of democratic processes; the third is that it is a mistake to charge measures intended to benefit others with being objectionably paternalistic. Nys's explicit aim in presenting these challenges is not to show that the charge of paternalism in public health is never sound, but to stimulate further discussion. My paper takes up this invitation by responding to each of the challenges Nys presents, including discussing where they fail and identifying which succeed. (shrink)