Introduction [Health Rights]

Abstract

What is the nature, and extent, of human rights to health and/or health care? What, if any, are the philosophical bases of such rights? What does domestic and international law require with regard to health rights? Independent of what the law actually requires, what should it require in the way of health rights protection and promotion? What obligations should (or do) health rights entail - and upon whom should (or do) relevant obligations fall? What, for example, are the obligations of governments to promote health rights in their own countries and/or to promote such rights in other countries? What is the relationship between human rights to health and/or health care and other human rights? How might health rights conflict with other rights and values - and how should such conflicts be resolved? How do questions about health rights relate to other issues that those concerned with bioethics have traditionally focused upon? Given cultural diversity regarding questions about rights and ethics, (how) can harmonization be achieved in a globalized world? Given value pluralism, are ideas about universal rights to health and/or health care even tenable? What specific health rights issues arise in the particular contexts of the most devastating infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis - and/or in the context of gender? The paramount importance of such questions is illustrated by current debates about health care reform in the United States and about intellectual property rights in pharmaceuticals - and, most dramatically, by the health catastrophe in developing countries, where many millions of people suffer and die yearly from preventable and/or treatable illness, due to poor living conditions and lack of access to health care, among other societal factors. The seminal essays collected here address these and related questions from multidisciplinary perspectives. We have divided the volume into five main parts which focus, in turn, on (1) philosophical questions about the bases for the right to health and/or health care, (2) interrelationships between health and human rights, (3) global bioethics and public health ethics, (4) intellectual property rights in pharmaceuticals and (5) health rights issues arising in specific contexts (that is, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and gender). Show more