International law, human rights and HIV/AIDS.
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This article explores the relevance of international human rights law in the response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic at national and international levels. Public health advocates can use arguments based on this body of law to promote responses to HIV/AIDS that reflect sound public health principles and documented best practice. Development assistance is increasingly linked to rights-based approaches, such as participatory processes, and strategic alliances between health professionals, organizations of people living with HIV/AIDS, and affected communities. Legal and human rights advocacy strategies are increasingly productive and necessary. (+info)
First, tell the truth: a dialogue on human rights, deception, and the use of smokeless tobacco as a substitute for cigarettes.
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The use of smokeless tobacco as a substitute for cigarettes raises many scientific and ethical issues, as the fictitious discussion below reveals. (+info)
From dust to dust: ethical and practical issues involved in the location, exhumation, and identification of bodies from mass graves.
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There are many potential purposes served by the investigation of human remains: criminal fact-finding, archaeological exploration, forensic research, and others. This paper focuses on the identification of remains from mass graves to find missing persons. The primary goal of such efforts is to honor the memory of the dead by bringing closure to living family members, thus supporting the human rights of both the living and the deceased. Cultures, customs, political, and interpersonal specifics will vary, but that singular goal should remain the central guiding principle. This article presents ethical and practical issues resulting from efforts to locate, exhume, and identify the remains of mass fatalities. (+info)
Diabetes in childhood: are the laws obligations or resources? The Italian situation.
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Two fundamental acts: "Provisions for the prevention and the cure of the diabetes mellitus" of 1987 and "Convention on the rights of the child, New York, 20 November 1989" of 1991, are a clear reference to the many laws promulgated in Italy protecting the special needs of children and adolescents with diabetes. In particular these acknowledge and emphasize the social value of the disease, the importance of the relationship with families and the infrequent need of hospital treatments. To give adequate answers to the need of self-management, it is essential to involve an integrated multidisciplinary team, adequately formed in order to supply an educational therapeutic intervention, based on medical aid and oriented on psycho pedagogy and social assistance. Cooperation and integration among health services of the territory, hospitals and social services for the complete protection of patients with diabetes--not only of their disease--are therefore necessary. Adequate laws can perhaps influence the quality of treatment and the quality of life in children with diabetes. (+info)
Long-term trends and a sustainability transition.
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How do long-term global trends affect a transition to sustainability? We emphasize the "multitrend" nature of 10 classes of trends, which makes them complex, contradictory, and often poorly understood. Each class includes trends that make a sustainability transition more feasible as well as trends that make it more difficult. Taken in their entirety, they serve as a checklist for the consideration of global trends that impact place-based sustainability studies. (+info)
The education and medical practice of Dr. James McCune Smith (1813-1865), first black American to hold a medical degree.
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James McCune Smith (1813-1865)--first black American to obtain a medical degree, prominent abolitionist and suffragist, compassionate physician, prolific writer, and public intellectual--has been relatively neglected by historians of medicine. No biography of Smith exists to this day, though he has been the subject of several essays. Born, in his own words, "the son of a self-emancipated bond-woman," and denied admission to colleges in the United States, his native land, Smith earned medical, master's, and baccalaureate degrees at Glasgow University in Scotland. On his return to New York City in 1837, Smith became the first black physician to publish articles in US medical journals. Smith was broadly involved in the anti-slavery and suffrage movements, contributing to and editing abolitionist newspapers and serving as an officer of many organizations for the improvement of social conditions in the black community. In his scientific writings Smith debunked the racial theories in Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, refuted phrenology and homeopathy, and responded with a forceful statistical critique to the racially biased US Census of 1840. Frederick Douglass, Gerrit Smith, and John Brown personally collaborated with James McCune Smith in the fight for black freedom. As the learned physician-scholar of the abolition movement, Smith was instrumental in making the overthrow of slavery credible and successful. (+info)
Poverty, equity, human rights and health.
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Those concerned with poverty and health have sometimes viewed equity and human rights as abstract concepts with little practical application, and links between health, equity and human rights have not been examined systematically. Examination of the concepts of poverty, equity, and human rights in relation to health and to each other demonstrates that they are closely linked conceptually and operationally and that each provides valuable, unique guidance for health institutions' work. Equity and human rights perspectives can contribute concretely to health institutions' efforts to tackle poverty and health, and focusing on poverty is essential to operationalizing those commitments. Both equity and human rights principles dictate the necessity to strive for equal opportunity for health for groups of people who have suffered marginalization or discrimination. Health institutions can deal with poverty and health within a framework encompassing equity and human rights concerns in five general ways: (1) institutionalizing the systematic and routine application of equity and human rights perspectives to all health sector actions; (2) strengthening and extending the public health functions, other than health care, that create the conditions necessary for health; (3) implementing equitable health care financing, which should help reduce poverty while increasing access for the poor; (4) ensuring that health services respond effectively to the major causes of preventable ill-health among the poor and disadvantaged; and (5) monitoring, advocating and taking action to address the potential health equity and human rights implications of policies in all sectors affecting health, not only the health sector. (+info)
Health and the environment: a global challenge. WHO Commission on Health and Environment.
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A healthy environment is not only a need, it is also a right; the right to live and work in an environment conducive to physical and mental health is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Everyone shares the responsibility for ensuring that this right is duly acknowledged. The responsibility for action lies with individuals and with business. Governments have the responsibility of setting up the strategic and institutional framework within which action is taken. There are three main global objectives: achieving a sustainable basis for health for all--by slowing down population growth as soon as possible, and promoting life-styles and patterns of consumption among affluent groups and countries that are consistent with ecological sustainability; providing an environment that promotes health--by reducing the risk of physical, chemical and biological hazards and ensuring that everyone has the means to acquire the resources on which health depends; making all individuals and organizations aware of their responsibilities for health and its environmental basis. (+info)