Subject(s)
Betacoronavirus , Coronavirus Infections/prevention & control , Healthcare Disparities , Models, Theoretical , Pandemics/prevention & control , Pneumonia, Viral/prevention & control , Public Health/ethics , COVID-19 , Coronavirus Infections/epidemiology , Humans , Pandemics/ethics , Pneumonia, Viral/epidemiology , SARS-CoV-2 , United States/epidemiologySubject(s)
Drinking Water , Food Supply , Population Groups , Public Health , Quality of Life , Sanitation , Child Mortality/ethnology , Child Mortality/history , Child, Preschool , Disease/economics , Disease/ethnology , Disease/history , Food Supply/economics , Food Supply/history , History, 20th Century , History, 21st Century , Humans , Population Groups/education , Population Groups/ethnology , Population Groups/history , Population Groups/legislation & jurisprudence , Population Groups/psychology , Preventive Medicine/economics , Preventive Medicine/education , Preventive Medicine/history , Public Health/economics , Public Health/education , Public Health/history , Quality of Life/legislation & jurisprudence , Quality of Life/psychology , Sanitation/economics , Sanitation/historyABSTRACT
I offer some reasons for the theory that, compared with human beings, non-human animals have some but lesser intrinsic value. On the basis of this theory, I first argue that we do not know how to compare an animal's claim to be free from a more serious type of harm (e.g., death), and a human's claim to be free from some lesser type of harm (e.g., non-fatal morbidity). For we need to take account of these parties' intrinsic value, and their competing types of claim. Yet, there exists no known way for making such comparison, when a human's intrinsic value is higher than that of an animal, whereas the type of claim an animal has is morally weightier than the type of claim a human has. Second, I explain why utilitarianism is unhelpful in making such comparison. Third, in the case where some animals can be sacrificed for saving a larger number of humans, it is crucial to ask whether animals have the right to life, and I argue that this question is more perplexing than we might think. My conclusion is that the various difficulties mentioned above have a deeper source than we have so far acknowledged, and that this reflects that the moral reality is less tidy and more complex than many theories portray.