Health Rights

Abstract

Health Rights is a multidisciplinary collection of seminal papers examining ethical, legal, and empirical questions regarding the human right to health or health care. The volume discusses what obligations health rights entail for governments and other actors, how they relate to and potentially conflict with other rights and values, and how cultural diversity bears on the formulation and implementation of health rights. The paramount importance of such questions is illustrated, among other things, by the catastrophic health situation in developing countries and current debates about the TRIPS Agreement and health care reform in the United States. The volume is divided into five main parts which focus on philosophical questions about the bases for the right to health or health care; links between health and human rights; global bioethics and public health ethics; intellectual property rights in pharmaceuticals; and finally health rights issues arising in specific contexts such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and gender.