Ethics and Public Health

Abstract

The article discusses the state of arts in ethics of public health. It does so based on the classic ethical questions in public health relating them to ethical issues opened by modern social epidemiology from the study of the social determinants of health and the (social) causes of (natural) causes of disease in human populations. One of the thesis of the article is that the ethical problems traditionally focused on the conflict between population welfare and the principle of autonomy must be accompanied and reinterpreted in the light of the growing problems of social justice that produces the modern view of public health and social epidemiology.