Bioethics Must Consider War as a Public Health Crisis: Reply to Commentaries

Our paper, “War, Bioethics, and Public Health,” urged bioethics as a field to broaden its scope to include war’s public health effects (Jecker et al. Citation2025). We proposed bioethical principles that forcefully address war as a public health crisis:reducing the disproportionate burden war has on the health of civilian warzone populations, especially women and children (Health Justice);holding warring parties accountable for war’s public health impact (Accountability);upholding people’s ability to lead dignified lives, including a minimal capability to be healthy (Dignified Lives);incorporating public health sustainability into the definition of war’s ‘success’ (Public Health Sustainability); andcomparing the public health effects of war to its alternatives (Public Health Maximization).We appreciate the vigorous response our proposal generated, and the overall recognition of the ethical importance of this topic. We are grateful to Eagen; Goldfarb and Asher; Greenbaum; Hurley O’Dwyer, Rogers, and Barry; Lederman; Marks; O’Mathúna; Parasidis; Pikulytska and Anderson; and Pilkington for thoughtful critiques of our paper. We cannot do justice to all the points these colleagues raised across ten separate commentaries. In this short response, we focus primarily on concerns that most directly engage with our central argument.