The medical journal, The Lancet, while established for the purposes of reform, which was needed back in the day, has now embraced the Leftist worldview, with critical race style material, and now Deep Green ideology. A recent leading article, “One Health: A Call for Ecological Equity,” linked below, takes the line promoted by Deep Ecology, of what is called biocentric egalitarianism, that all life is of equal value. Of course, the reference is to animal life, and not to human foetuses, so the relevance to the abortion debate is not addressed, but this could be an internal Leftist contradiction. I looked at the piece and could find no reasoned philosophical argument why a human life is equal to that of a dung beetle, or tape worm. But, it serves the agenda of the New World Order on climate change.
“Once arguably the most prestigious medical journal in the world, The Lancet has been captured by the left and is spouting embarrassing nonsense. A series of extremist left wing embarrassments in recent years, including a call for an outright ban on tobacco use in the UK, where the magazine is published, a humiliating retraction of an attack on the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid followed by an explanation of what it learned from the debacle, and a cover that referred to women as “bodies with vaginas” followed by an apology have not taught it a lesson that sticks.
On January 21 of this year, The Lancet published a cover story article titled “One Health: a call for ecological equity” that takes the position that your life is no more valuable than that of a dung beetle.
Modern attitudes to human health take a purely anthropocentric view—that the human being is the centre of medical attention and concern. One Health places us in an interconnected and interdependent relationship with non-human animals and the environment. The consequences of this thinking entail a subtle but quite revolutionary shift of perspective: all life is equal, and of equal concern.
Naturally, this means not eating animals: “recommending people move away from an animal-based diet to a plant-based one.”
There is gauzy ecotopian language:
…“an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimise the health of people, animals, and ecosystems. It recognises the health of humans, domestic and wild animals, plants, and the wider environment (including ecosystems) are closely linked and inter-dependent.”
And the word “equity” in the title is a tell that income inequality is seen as a grave evil combined with a ritual denial of paternalism toward poor countries:
One huge concern is the risk of worsening inequalities as One Health networks are largely situated and resourced in high-income countries. The current One Health architecture of institutions, processes, regulatory frameworks, and legal instruments has led to a fragmented, multilateral health security landscape. As the second paper in The Series points out, a more egalitarian approach is needed, one that is not paternalistic or colonial in telling low-income and middle-income countries what they should do. For example, demanding that wet markets be closed to halt an emerging zoonosis might be technically correct, but if it does not account for those who make their livelihoods from such markets, One Health will only worsen the lives of those it claims to care about. Decolonisation requires listening to what countries say and what their needs are.
This position that human life is no more valuable than animals’ lives is a repudiation of the Judeo-Christian understanding, which is based on Genesis 1:26-28:
“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”
All very well and good, and I totally agree with the Biblical perspective, but we are dealing here with influential leftists, who control the institutions. Conservatives, in their comfort zone, with their pet projects, do not realise what a battle lies ahead, and just how deep the problem is.