ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL BIOETHICS IN VAN RENSSELAER POTTER

Abstract

Potter’s global bioethics represents a critique of the ideal of progress and economic
and technoscientific development of his time, which in view of immediate economic
profits degrades the natural environment and compromises future human survival
and the quality of life of the entire biosphere. Faced with this reality, this research
aims to analyze how Potter’s global bioethics is materialized in environmental and
social bioethics, overcoming the individual perspective of bioethics, and with the
expansion of ethical protection for human, environmental and social communities.
This is analytical-critical research since Potter recognizes with his global bioethics
that there is an interdependence between nature’s health and human and social
health. It is concluded that with the natural degradation, the human being, its values
and principles, its cultural identity and history are also degraded.