One health suggests that human and animal health are comparable, but in practice, the concept aligns with the principles of public health ethics. One health ethics, as such, appears to eschew connotations of equality for the natural world. A theory of agency revises that anthropocentric assumption. This article begins with a critique of environmental dualism: the idea that human culture and nature are separate social realms, thus justifying public health as a (unifying) purpose. In response, this article argues that, first, a neuroethics of one health might equally regard humans and (some) animals, which have comparable mental states, as rational agents. Second, rational agency should ground our moral connections to nature in terms of the egalitarian interests we have (as coinhabitants) in the health of the planet. While this article makes a moderate case for interspecific rights (as the first argument asserts), neuroscience is unlikely for now to change how most public institutions regard nonhuman animals in practice. However, the second argument asserts that rational agency is also grounds for philosophical environmentalism. One health ethics, therefore, is a theory of equality and connects culture to nature, and, as such, is a separate, but coextensive approach to that of public health.

Two problems are considered here. One relates to who has moral status, and the other relates to who has moral responsibility. The criteria for mattering morally have long been disputed, and many humans and nonhuman animals have been considered "marginal cases," on the contested edges of moral considerability and concern. The marginalization of humans and other species is frequently the pretext for denying their rights, including the rights to health care, to reproductive freedom, and to bodily autonomy. There is broad agreement across cultural and philosophical traditions about the capacities and responsibilities of moral agents. I propose an inclusive and expansive way of thinking about moral status, situating it not in the characteristics or capacities of individuals, but in the responsibilities and obligations of moral agents. Moral agents, under this view, are not privileged or entitled to special treatment but rather have responsibilities. I approach this by considering some African communitarian conceptions of moral status and moral agency. I propose that moral agency can also be more expansive and include not just individual moral agents but collective entities that have some of the traits of moral agents: power, freedom, and the capacity to recognize and act on the demands of morality and acknowledge and respect the rights of others. Expanding who and what is a moral agent correspondingly extends moral responsibility for respecting rights and fostering the conditions for the health and wellbeing of humans and animals onto the collective entities who uniquely have the capacity to attend to global-scale health threats such as pandemics and human-caused climate change.