Аннотация:One important reason why public health ethics is such an exciting area of bioethics is that we are just at the beginning of exploring the relevant conceptual and theoretical issues. There has, of course, been previous work done on these themes, but there are few (if any) well-worked-out ‘theories’ of public health ethics that can either be easily supported or contested. The fairest summary of the present position is to say that we have a number of sketches or suggestions for what such an adequate theoretical position might look like, but there is still plenty of work to do, expanding and refining these ideas. One of the tasks of this journal is to encourage this engagement, and it is very satisfying to see some such work in this issue. We look forward to seeing further developments. One possible normative framework for public health ethics is offered by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics (NCB) in its recent report Public Health: Ethical Issues (2007).
