One Health - Eco-Health

National Taiwan University, Risk Society and Policy Research Center, 2016

Lecture: One Health - Eco-Health at National Taiwan University, Risk Society and Policy Research Center, College of Social Science, June 8, 2016. 1 hour, 17 minutes.
Online at:
http://hdl.handle.net/10217/178140

There is only one world and only one health. Health effects ripple throughout the web of life. Human health requires thinking in ecological contexts, increasingly in more global ones. This further suggests more inclusive ethical concerns: global, international, and interspecific, beyond the immediate protection of human individuals from disease. Developed countries, which may have thought themselves protected with their high technologies and advanced medical systems, discover they are still linked with health, human and animal, in the developing world, even in wild nature, and vulnerable to disruptions there, to which they may also be contributing.

Thinking of health must consider our entwined destiny with our landscapes. Ecology is strikingly like medical science. Both are therapeutic sciences. Ecologists are responsible for environmental health, which is really another form of public health. Health is just as much "skin-out" as it is "skin-in." It is hard to live a healthy life in a sick environment.