Public Health and Ethics

Question One

The improvement of the locals’ quality of life and economics is the primary goal of locating the uranium enrichment plant in Homer. Additionally, proponents of uranium plants believe that Homer residents would benefit from the plant’s abundance of work prospects. Due to Homer’s very low land prices compared to other places, Multinational Corporation decided to locate its facility there. Additionally, since the majority of people in the Homer region are low-income, it is pretty simple for the corporation to obtain inexpensive labour there.

They will support the project if the Homer locals believe that the uranium enrichment facility would enhance their quality of life. They may run into trouble if they are concerned about the effects such a facility would have on their health and safety. While Louisianans would be subject to the facility’s risks, local investors and business owners may see this concept as a potential source of profit. Politicians might approve of this idea for a related reason or choose to “play it safe” by rejecting it because it is risky and immoral.

City locals have also settled on Homer for several development and economic reasons. They believe that building such a magnificent facility can drive significant regional development. The second critical reason is energy independence. The city locals are convinced that building a Uranium facility in the area can stabilize energy security. Notably, the school system personnel equally agreed to the establishment due to several positive effects, including funding for education. The schools can receive funding due to increased tax revenue from the newly built facility.

Question Two

The fundamental responsibility of environmental activists is to raise public awareness of the damaging consequences of various sectors on people’s health. Environmental activists voluntarily start their campaign against a particular business once they learn of an incident where they feel the company may impact the local animals, water supplies, and landscapes. The Homer uranium enrichment plant is in a similar situation.

Environmental activists consider the Homer uranium enrichment project hazardous and polluted. The Homer uranium enrichment plant has drawn the attention of several parties due to the significant investment required for this project. It has long-lasting impacts on the inhabitants of Homer and his surroundings.

 Question Three

I do not believe that this specific minority group would benefit from using that centre. The facility will indeed provide employment opportunities for members of the minority group, but these positions are only transitory. Minority employees will get much lower pay than their majority counterparts. Most of the new employment generated due to this facility will be reserved for highly trained specialists. The Americans are being exploited for the benefit of the corporation. The Homer community is in grave danger from the facility. The radiation emissions from the facilities will negatively impact people in Homer. People in the neighbourhood will have to pay a hefty price for this development, although the local economy will benefit little.

 Question Four

The phrase “informed consent” is often used in the medical field. Locals must be consulted before any industrial development, whether by the government or a private firm. The general public may thus approve the launch of a project like the Claiborne facility if it is provided with sufficient information. However, in the earlier example, the community’s members were not asked for informed consent. Disclosure, comprehension, voluntariness, and logicality are the four pillars of informed consent (Shrader-Frechette, 2003).

As stated above, the community did not offer their informed consent since they were unaware of the facility’s true nature or its potential radiological and health risks. All four components must be present for a community to provide its informed consent for the beginning of an initiative like the construction of the Claiborne facility. Group assent would be similar to individual assent in that all parts would still need to be present, but a population rather than an individual would define them. In order to have honest group informed consent, a group would need to reach an agreement with all potentially affected members, and these four components would need to apply to everyone inside the group. Module 4’s discussion of shared administration as a potential tool in Homer suggests that this approach might help ensure that all stakeholder groups are heard, and their input is valued.

 Question Five

As mentioned earlier, the incident serves as a prime illustration of environmental racism. The corporation that wants to build the uranium enrichment plant near Homer did so purposefully. The population here is primarily illiterate, and the company knows this fact. It is more important to win over black Americans than white Americans (Venkatapuram, 2022). They do not know how the uranium plant in their neighbourhood affects them. The corporation is intentionally keeping individuals in the dark about important matters. The corporation could have located its factories anywhere, but it picked the area with the highest concentration of black people since it offered the lowest costs.

References

Jennings, B., Kahn, J., Mastroianni, A. C., & Parker, L. S. (2003). Ethics and public health: model curriculum.

Venkatapuram, S. (2022). Public health and ethics. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Public Health (pp. 70-84). Routledge.