Bioethics and One Health: Beyond Anthropocentrism

Interest in the One Health concept has been reawakened by the recent COVID-19 pandemic and the emergence and reemergence of zoonotic diseases in general. One Health is the notion that human health is intricately tied to animal and environmental health. Unfortunately, despite its promise to adopt an integrative and collaborative approach to health and disease, the One Health approach retains an anthropocentric bias and does not adequately address the nonhuman aspects of the triad. Mainstream bioethicists are not helping the situation either. Their approach to bioethics is equally human centered. Indeed, they have little to say about how we should treat animals or the environment. The overarching objective of this chapter is to highlight these anthropocentric biases in the One Health approach and mainstream bioethics, a topic that has not been sufficiently addressed in bioethics literature. Using a conceptual approach, the chapter uncovers these assumptions and argues that both bioethics and the One Health approach could benefit from Aldo Leopold’s ecocentric thought and the ecological wisdom embedded in traditional African cultures and worldviews. Indeed, incorporating diverse cultural viewpoints without compromising core moral principles will make bioethics more truly global.