The Dark Side of Sustainability: Avoiding and Shortening Lives in the Anthropocene

Paola, Marcello Di; Garasic, Mirko Daniel

doi:10.3280/riss2013-002004

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…The amount of "safe" carbon in the atmosphere-calculated to be 350 parts per million-has Third, and related to the second point, there is a concern that carbon calculations will lead to unfair limitation in health care. 32 Indeed, bias and discrimination that would lead policymakers to deprioritize health care needs of the medically underserved, including women, 33 LGBTQ+, 34 the disabled, 35 and racial minorities, 36 must be avoided. However, health care carbon expenditure does not necessarily translate to better medical quality of life.…”

Section: Carbon As An Inadequate Criterion For Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmentally sustainable development and use of artificial intelligence in health care

Richie

2022

Bioethics

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Artificial intelligence (AI) can transform health care by delivering medical services to underserved areas, while also filling gaps in health care provider availability. However, AI may also lead to patient harm due to fatal glitches in robotic surgery, bias in diagnosis, or dangerous recommendations. Despite concerns ethicists have identified in the use of AI in health care, the most significant consideration ought not be vulnerabilities in the software, but the environmental impact of AI. Health care emits a significant amount of carbon in many countries. As AI becomes an essential part of health care, ethical reflection must include the potential to negatively impact the environment. As such, this article will first overview the carbon emissions in health care. It will, second, offer five reasons why carbon calculations are insufficient to address sustainability in health care. Third, the article will derive normative concepts from the goals of medicine, the principles of biomedical ethics, and green bioethics—the very locus in which AI in health care sits—to propose health, justice, and resource conservation as criteria for sustainable AI in health care. In the fourth and final part of the article, examples of sustainable and unsustainable development and use of AI in health care will be evaluated through the three‐fold lens of health, justice, and resource conservation. With various ethical approaches to AI in health care, the imperative for environmental sustainability must be underscored, lest carbon emissions continue to increase, harming people and planet alike.

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Section: Carbon As An Inadequate Criterion For Sustainabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmentally sustainable development and use of artificial intelligence in health care

Richie

2022

Bioethics

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“…In the meantime, as Hershey (2010) observes, the evidence of entropic change surrounds us constantly. In the warming more polluted Earth we see material traces in less ice (the lowest entropy form of H 2 O), more water (a higher entropy form of H 2 O), more steam (the highest entropy form of H 2 O), and fewer species overall, as lifeforms attempt – and fail – to cope with this change (Choi, 2019; Di Paola & Garasic, 2013).…”

Section: “Meeting the Universe Halfway”mentioning

confidence: 99%

Opening out ageing: On the entropy of all things

Andrews

Duff

2022

Trans Inst British Geog

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“…This quickly turns to rhetoric about death panels. 33 Many of the themes which mark the resistance to conversations about health care resource allocation redouble when sustainability is invoked. To posit carbon containment as a rationale for health care delivery reduction is a steep fight indeed.…”

Section: Lack Of Sustainability In Us Health Carementioning

confidence: 99%

Can United States Healthcare Become Environmentally Sustainable? Towards Green Healthcare Reform

Richie¹

2020

J. Law. Med. Ethics

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In 2014, the United States health care industry produced an estimated 480 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2); nearly 8% of the country's total emissions. The importance of sustainability in health care — as a business reliant on fossil fuels for transportation, energy, and operational functioning — is slowly being recognized. These efforts to green health care are incomplete, since they only focus on health care structures. The therapeutic relationship is the essence of health care — not the buildings that contain the practice. As such, this article will first postulate reasons for a lack of environmental sustainability in US health care. Second, the article will focus on current green health care initiatives in the United States in which patients and physicians participate. Third, the rationale for participation in green initiatives will be explained. Fourth, the article will propose that, based on the environmental values of patients and physicians, health care insurance plans and health care insurance companies can be targeted for green health care reform, thereby closing the loop of sustainable health care delivery.

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The Dark Side of Sustainability: Avoiding and Shortening Lives in the Anthropocene

Cited by 5 publications

References 26 publications

Environmentally sustainable development and use of artificial intelligence in health care

Environmentally sustainable development and use of artificial intelligence in health care

Opening out ageing: On the entropy of all things

Can United States Healthcare Become Environmentally Sustainable? Towards Green Healthcare Reform

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