The juxtaposition of these three words, because of the topical issues that they represent, could no doubt suffice to justify the object of our thinking. But the link between them, which does exist, needs some explanation, to give direction to our debate.
Health and the environment are two biological states whose precarious balance largely depends on their milieu; they owe this development as much to biological data as to cultural and social factors.
Although health has progressively become an individual preoccupation – as medicine has put an end to the inevitability of disease and has opened up for man the gates of hope – the environment until recently was neglected, despised, no doubt because the natural order of things seemed to us to be something gained that was intangible or on the contrary, desirous of making it move, we could not yet perceive the risks that an industrial or technical revolution could have on our everyday Eden.
For the link between health and environment, more than in the interaction of the factors which contribute to each of these two balances, has as its central figure, both object and subject, man, his behaviour, his action both individual and collective.
The control that accession to an industrial and technical society has given us today affects – it is evident – for everyone – not just our health but also the world around us in which, Promethean revenge, we juggle with the elements.
The biological revolution, by multiplying the applications which question the certainties with which we have lived but also the symbolism of human representations, has given rise to this unanswered interrogation, this post-modern discourse, fed by a mix of fear and fascination for what man has built; I mean bioethics…