Hurricane Katrina and global bioethics

Johathan Moreno has written an interesting piece on how reflection on Hurricane Katrina could change the face of mainstream bioethics. The hurricane, according to Moreno, has made brutally explicit important connections between public health, poverty, and environmental values that have often remained invisible within a 'bioethics by privileged for the privileged'.

Time will tell whether Hurricane Katrina will have a progressive effect on bioethicists. But how could it without a political conversion towards a social justice-based bioethics that focuses on the power arrangements that make (and keep) the poor sick and vulnerable in New Orleans, New South Wales and New Delhi?