The public-health intelligentsia and bioethics movement are determined to become the primary policy decision makers internationally. For example, back in 2020–at the height of COVID–Anthony Fauci wrote that the UN and WHO should be empowered to “rebuild the infrastructure of human existence.” You don’t get much more expansive than that.

In the years since, others among that ilk have pounded the same drum furthered by an international agreement known as “One Health” (without US involvement) establishing an international bureaucracy aiming “to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals and ecosystems.”

Toward that end, writing in The Lancet, a gaggle of international technocrats and academics reject the WHO’s current definition of human health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity,” and advocate an almost unlimited “holistic” approach beyond the human realm. From, “A New Definition of Human Health is Needed to Better Implement One Health” (citations omitted):

Serious challenges to global health gains are posed by environmental changes, such as climatic change, ocean acidification, land degradation, water scarcity or excess, overexploitation of fisheries, and biodiversity loss; challenges that are all expected to increase and interact synergistically during the second half of this century and beyond if action is not taken. Together with population growth, these trends are driven by highly inequitable, inefficient, and unsustainable patterns of resource consumption and technological development driven by industries that maximise profit over human and planetary health. Therefore, such a new health definition would help ensure that the interdependencies between health, climate, and biodiversity are considered in decision making, including in areas related to agriculture and food systems, at the local, regional, national, and international levels, beyond economic necessities and interests.

Think of the power that would devolve to international technocrats:

Changing the definition of human health should be the starting point for political and economic changes and actions to: increase prevention actions and funding; modify World Trade Organization rules by including environmental and health costs (negative externalities) in products and exchanges; promote changes at the national level towards interministerial governance of the living world; and develop health research projects and initiatives at the interface between science and decision making at all levels…

Human health must be fundamentally understood in a holistic and inseparable way from climate, environment, biodiversity, agriculture, and food systems for joint benefits for humans, animals, plants, and ecosystems. Broadening the definition of human health is a crucial milestone to shift from a human-centric approach to health to a human-led holistic approach to health for the planet and people.

Or, as Fauci put it, “rebuild the entire infrastructure of human existence” in a manner in which human wellbeing will be merely one factor in determining “health” policy.

This means we will all be conscripted into the public health corps:

A broader definition of health, based on interdependencies with increased citizen empowerment, would promote individual responsibility to protect others, especially the poorest, but also ecosystems. These changes will require children and future citizens to be literate about these complex and integrated approaches, through their incorporation into the school curriculum. A more comprehensive definition will also drive much-needed changes in the training of human health professionals (which currently barely includes environmental health) and promote common and better interconnected training of doctors, pharmacists, nurses, veterinarians, ecologists, and biologists.

The left always redefines basic terms and blurs crucial distinctions (between human and non-human, for example) as a means of expanding its power. So too here. One Health and other international accords are laying the foundation for a progressive international technocracy.

The best resistance to all of this, it seems to me, is strengthening national sovereignty. I have no doubt the Trump administration will do that. But what happens when the next progressive president is elected? I shudder to think.