Public Health Ethics Paper (accepted for publication)

I was very pleased to learn today that my latest journal submission titled "From Sanitation Science to Geroscience:  Public Health Must Transcend ‘Folkbiology’" was accepted for publication in Public Health Ethics.  The abstract: 

Folkbiology refers to people’s everyday understanding of the biological world.  The early twentieth century pioneers of public health C-E.A Winslow (1877-1957), and his mentor H. Biggs (1859-1923), conceptualized public health as the “purchasable” science of preventing disease and death from unfavourable economic and living conditions.  Their ideas were foundational in shaping public health’s strategy of a ‘war against disease’ (Winslow, 1903), a strategy that was very successfully in preventing the early-life mortality risks from infectious diseases, and was eventually extended to combating the chronic diseases of late life (like cancer). However, the initial framing of public health, through the lens of sanitation science, was predicated upon folkbiological premises that geroscience must abate in order to direct public health interventions towards the goal of improving the quality of life for older persons in the twenty-first century.  Three folkbiological premises of sanitation science’s “war against disease” are identified and critiqued: (1) the belief that health is the ‘normal’ condition of the human mechanism, and disease ‘unnecessary’; (2) the belief that the proximate causes of disease are the only modifiable risk factors public health interventions can alter; and (3) the belief that the rate of biological aging is universal. 

Cheers, 

Colin