Autonomy Health As Wholeness

If I was to lead a group discussion on important bioethics topics, I would focus the discussion on the concepts of economy, health as wholeness, and the environment’s importance. My peers should be informed on autonomy, health as wholeness, and the environment because we need to be aware of our individual rights and responsibilities as well as our role as part of a greater whole. To begin the group discussion, I would have everybody read “Respect for Autonomy” by Beauchamp and Childress. In their article, Beauchamp and Childress describe personal autonomy as “self-rule that is free from both controlling interference and by others and from certain limitations such as an inadequate understanding that prevents meaningful choice” (Elliott, 54).

Berry mentions in his article that we need to be aware of our environment and keep it as healthy as possible (Elliott 671). While many of us recognize the general importance of environmental health, such as maintaining crops, having clean air to breathe and water to drink, we greatly underestimate its importance in individual health and its effects on medical practices. With global warming and climate change, we will be, if we are not already, be facing challenges such as decreased soil fertility, access to freshwater, crop yields, and the spread and mutation of infectious diseases (Elliott 690-695). Many ecosystems are heavily influenced by temperature, and climate change can and will drastically change many ecosystems. In the case of crop yields, the change in ecosystems could negatively influence pollinating animals such as bees and hummingbirds, and result in crops not being as well pollinated, and crop yields decreasing. When crop yields drop, we face issues like widespread hunger and famine. In the same vein, infectious diseases are often limited to certain regions because they can only survive in certain conditions. Climate change will change climatic conditions in ways that may facilitate the spread of infectious diseases into new areas, and they may become much more prominent issues than they used to be. Our economies, social stability, and health are all at stake when we damage our environment. Green energy is important now more than ever, and the medical community has done little to convert to sustainable resources for sustainable treatment and health care. As Bednarz describes in “Medicine After Oil,” medical practices rely heavily on petroleum products such as gloves, various plastic products (including heart valves), antibiotics, various gels and