One Health: How Interdependence Enriches Veterinary Ethics Education
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, 3584 CM Yalelaan 2, The Netherlands
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Animals 2020, 10(1), 13; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10010013
Submission received: 28 November 2019
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Revised: 12 December 2019
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Accepted: 17 December 2019
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Published: 19 December 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Veterinary Ethics)
Simple Summary
The idea of One Health acknowledges the interdependence of human and non-human animal health against the backdrop of a shared environment. This requires collaboration across disciplines to tackle complex health problems. How does One Health affect the education of veterinary ethics, traditionally restricted to both animal and professional ethics? First, veterinary ethics education provides an opportunity within the curriculum for students to engage with the meaning and implication of One Health, so as to develop their own viewpoint. Similarly, One Health can enrich veterinary ethics. It does so by introducing relevant ethical fields and other cultural perspectives, as well as promoting ways of teaching that motivate and sensitize students to become aware of the underlying interdependency and complexity of health issues while at the same time fostering their capacity for ethical problem solving.
Abstract
What does One Health imply for veterinary ethics education? In order to answer this question, we will first have to establish what One Health itself involves. The meaning and scope of One Health, however, cannot be established without reference to its values—whose health matters? Veterinary ethics education is well equipped to facilitate such an open-ended inquiry into multispecies health. One Health also widens the scope of veterinary ethics by making salient, among other fields, environmental ethics, global health justice, and non-Western approaches to ethics. Finally, One Health requires students to engage with interdependence. Discussing three levels of interdependence, we argue that veterinary ethics stands to benefit from a more contemplative pedagogy.
