The Lancet, a well-respected U.K. medical journal, is advocating for a major shift in healthcare perspective, moving away from a human-centered approach and instead embracing “ecological equity,” which is said to value all life equally, a Breitbart report revealed.
This approach is known as “One Health,” which is “an integrated, unifying approach that aims to sustainably balance and optimise the health of people, animals, and ecosystems,” according to the Lancet.
The traditional approach to healthcare, the journal states, is “a purely anthropocentric view — that the human being is the centre of medical attention and concern.”
One Health, however, “places us in an interconnected and interdependent relationship with non-human animals and the environment.”
The Lancet argues that “all life” is “of equal concern,” and as such, One Health calls for addressing pressing health issues at the “human–animal–environment interface.”
This shift the journal is calling for will require “a complete change to our relationship with animals” as well as a transition away “from an animal-based diet to a plant-based one, which not only benefits human health, but also animal health and wellbeing.”
The traditional view that human life is worth more than that of a non-human animal is not supported by One Health, Breitbart points out. It requires a fundamentally different approach to the natural world, one in which “we are as concerned about the welfare of non-human animals and the environment as we are about humans.”
The Lancet paper fails to address the detrimental health effects of defense chemicals found in plants, including oxalates, lectins, tannins, saponins, isothiocyanates, lectins, and cyanogenic glycosides.
It also fails to address how studies linking red meat consumption to health problems like heart disease, stroke, and cancer often “suffer from methodological limitations.”
In October 2022, the University of Washington analyzed decades of research on red meat consumption and its links to various health outcomes, finding “weak evidence of association between unprocessed red meat consumption and colorectal cancer, breast cancer, type 2 diabetes and ischemic heart disease.”
“Moreover, we found no evidence of an association between unprocessed red meat and ischemic stroke or hemorrhagic stroke,” the University of Washington study published in Nature Medicine showed.
Big Think comments on the findings:
Nearly all the research [connecting meat consumption with negative health outcomes] is observational, unable to tease out causation convincingly. Most are plagued by confounding variables. For example, perhaps meat eaters simply eat fewer vegetables, or tend to smoke more, or exercise less? Moreover, many are based on self-reported consumption. The simple fact is that people can’t remember what they eat with any accuracy. And lastly, the reported effect sizes in these scientific papers are often small. Is a supposed 15% greater risk of cancer really worth worrying about?
The Lancet’s paper also fails to give a philosophical grounding for its quasi-religious claim that “all life is equal, and of equal concern.” It is unclear what ontological metric or scientific device the paper’s authors used to determine that human beings are equivalent in value to animals and the physical world.
