In this paper we will focus on principle-based approaches in public health ethics, comparing some of their features with those of principlism, the well-known and widely-used “four principles” approach in medical ethics.
We will first look at some of the main features of principlism and then with those features in mind we will turn to public health frameworks that rely on principles to see what they have in common as well as how they might differ.
Understanding and recognizing some of principlism’s main features can help practitioners to:
- Better situate their own ethical deliberations in public health by seeing both the differences and the similarities between various ethical approaches;
- Identify and make explicit principlist orientations guiding...