Title: Induced harmful lifestyles and healthy choices

Authors: Claudio Ricciardi

Addresses: Department of Environment and Primary Prevention, Italian National Institute of Health, Rome, Italy

Abstract: Lifestyles harmful to health were always considered more dependent on individual responsibility. The view of the existence of certain social economic mechanisms of induction and unfair to certain lifestyle choices necessarily leads to a different ethical assessment of the unacceptable blaming the victims. Tobacco smoke, alcohol and poor eating habits have to be evaluated as |environmentally induced|. For this reason, they involve much more complex considerations of social responsibility and ethics.

Keywords: harmful lifestyles; healthy lifestyle choices; individual responsibility; ethics; social environment; social responsibility; health inequalities; prevention; tobacco smoke; alcohol; poor eating habits.

DOI: 10.1504/IJENVH.2011.041331

International Journal of Environment and Health, 2011 Vol.5 No.3, pp.262 - 273

Published online: 16 Jul 2011 *

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