Public Health Issues and Perspectives – Between Science, Politics and Bioethics

Abstract

The historical overview of prescribed measures and collective action in relation to health-preserving issues shows the cooperation between the performative and the executive power of the law; of the scientific intervention in determining and obviating dangers and finding possible solutions for danger-related problems; and of the need for social control as a tool for the sustenance of the difficult project of building and developing public health. The question about the way politics can contribute to the improvement of public health is gaining in importance in the intensification of structural and socioeconomic disparities. Public health is an enormously wide-applied and a very versatile project, implementing knowledge, guidelines and practices from medicine, natural sciences and technology, social sciences and politics. Its condition has always been accompanied with (as is also focused on) the socio-economico-political problems of the populations at stake, and it continues to be intensely committed to ensuring conditions for health and safety, thus contributing to the general idea of a potential enhancement of well-being and dignity.