[Comment] Offline: Planetary health's next frontier —biodiversity

Medicine's inspiring power is the moral importance it attaches to human life. The commitment of health workers to the protection and strengthening of humanity is a bulwark against violence, repression, and abuse. It is in their defence of life and human flourishing that medicine and medical science find their political and social force. But the priority medicine gives to being human is also its great conceit —and flaw. What has become increasingly clear is that, as Emmett Duffy and his colleagues put it in Nature earlier this year, “Human well-being depends strongly on the interacting web of living species, so much so that we take this for granted.” If we are concerned about human health, we shoul d also be concerned about the health of the biosphere that we inhabit.

Source: LANCET - November 10, 2017 Category: General Medicine Authors: Richard Horton Tags: Comment Source Type: research