Public Health: Biotechnoscience, Biopolitics, and Bioethics

Abstract

The complex field of public health is traversed by the following polarity: (a) a totalizing tendency to control society, both biologically and economically; (b) a tendency towards individualization of medicine and public health based on individuals’ freedom and accountability for their own health. Since the field of health has to do with biotechnoscientific and biopolitical practices and is thus permeated by conflicts of interests and values, bioethics enters the scene; its main scope in the field of health and individual and collective welfare consists of detecting, analyzing, and assessing such conflicts, proposing solutions that involve some form of convergence between moral agents and patients, ultimately aiming at quality of life of those affected by public policies and the incorporation of the tools of biotechnoscience.