Globalization, a process characterized by the growing interdependence of the world's people, impacts health systems and the social determinants of health in ways that are detrimental to health equity. In a world in which there are few countervailing normative and policy approaches to the dominant neoliberal regime underpinning globalization, the human rights paradigm constitutes a widely shared foundation for challenging globalization's effects. The substantive rights enumerated in human rights instruments include the right to the highest attainable level of physical and (...) mental health and others that are relevant to the determinants of health. The rights stipulated in these documents impose extensive legal obligations on states that have ratified these documents and confer health entitlements on their residents. Human rights norms have also inspired civil society efforts to improve access to essential medicines and medical services, particularly for HIV/AIDS. Nevertheless, many factors reduce the potential counterweight human rights might exert, including and specifically the nature of the human rights approach, weak political commitments to promoting and protecting health rights on the part of some states and their lack of institutional and economic resources to do so. Global economic markets and the relative power of global economic institutions are also shrinking national policy space. This article reviews the potential contributions and limitations of human rights to achieving greater equity in shaping the social determinants of health. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 7, July 2019, Page 22-23.

Volume 19, Issue 5, May 2019, Page 68-69.

With vast new scientific and technological powers, we face unprecedented choices for which traditional ethics provide little direct guidance. What role can the religious community play in addressing the ethical and theological issues that even science now acknowledges as urgent?Chapman's work forges a method for integrating ethical reasoning with scientific data, focusing on four issues -- cloning, genetic engineering, patenting of life, and environmental alteration. For each, she reviews the work of religious thinkers, assesses the roles of the religious community, (...) considers relevant confessional differences, determines how traditional theological and ethical concepts can be clarified, reformulated, and "operationalized" to meet the questions, and finally she formulates helpful methodological options. She calls for a scientifically informed religious ethics built dialogically from concepts in both science and theology. (shrink)

Keisha Ray and Jane Falls Cooper’s article “Bioethics of Environmental Injustice: Ethical, Legal, and Clinical Implications of Unhealthy Environments” seeks to give environmental concerns greater p...

Just as human embryonic stem cell research has generated controversy about the uses of human embryos for research and therapeutic applications, human embryonic stem cell patents raise fundamental ethical issues. The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted foundational patents, including a composition of matter (or product) patent to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s intellectual property office. In contrast, the European Patent Office rejected the same WARF patent application for ethical reasons. This article assesses (...) the appropriateness of these patents placing the discussion in the context of the deontological and consequentialist ethical issues related to human embryonic stem cell patenting. It advocates for a patent system that explicitly takes ethical factors into account and explores options for new types of intellectual property arrangements consistent with ethical concerns. (shrink)

The misuse of alcohol inflicts a major toll on individual users, their families, and the wider society. This includes disruptions of family life, violence, absenteeism and problems in the workplace, child neglect and abuse, and excess morbidity and mortality. The World Health Organization estimates that alcohol ranks eighth among global risk factors for death and is the third leading global risk factor for disease and disability. In the United States, alcohol dependence affects four to five percent of the population at (...) any given time. Alcohol dependence also exacts a significant financial toll.... (shrink)

The transition of novel and potentially promising medical therapies into their initial human clinical trials can engender conflicting pressures. On the one side, because Phase I trials raise greater ethical and human protection challenges than later stage clinical trials, there is a need to proceed cautiously. This is particularly the case for Phase I trials with a novel therapy being tested in humans for the first time, usually termed first-in-human (FIH) trials, especially if the FIH trial involves significant risks. On (...) the other side, scientists interested in having their research validated, corporations with a financial interest in the field, and potential patients and patient support groups desirous of having .. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 49-50.

This paper explores one of the major issues before transitional societies, the balance among truth, justice, and/or reconciliation. It focusses on the role of truth commissions, with an emphasis on the experience of South Africa. A central thesis of the paper is that establishing a shared truth that documents the causes, nature, and extent of severe and gross human rights abuses and/or collective violence under antecedent regimes is a prerequisite for achieving accountability, meaningful reconciliation, and a foundation for a common (...) future. It develops and applies an approach to reconciliation based on and extending Donald Shriver's concept of "political forgiveness.". (shrink)

THERE IS WIDESPREAD DISSATISFACTION WITH THE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM in this country. This essay outlines why. It then reviews and evaluates the contributions of the faith community to the discussions of health care reform to assess whether the perspective and contributions of religious actors are distinct from secular approaches. Finally, it proposes different emphases for the religious community's future involvement with health care reform.

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 3, Page 235-242, March 2022.

Rapid breakthroughs in genetic research spurred by the Human Genome Project, advances in molecular biology, and new reproductive technologies are raising the prospect that we may eventually have the technical capacity to modify genes that are transmitted to future generations not only to treat or eliminate diseases but also to "enhance" normal human characteristics beyond what is necessary to sustain or restore good health. This paper explores the ethical and justice implications of such genetic modifications. It argues against developing these (...) technologies primarily because it will not be possible to counter the deleterious justice impacts. It recommends the need for public education and public discussion, preferably with the religious community taking an active role, to shape decisions about future genetic research and applications, and for better regulation of genetic technologies with the potential for inheritable genetic alterations. (shrink)

Rosemary Ruether’s writings, for example, emphasize a need both for a continued critical evaluation of current scientific and societal paradigms from an ecological perspective and a dialogue and new synthesis between science and religion based on contemporary developments in the physical and biological sciences. If science is to serve as a resource for eco-theology and eco-ethics, it is necessary for environmental thought to be consistent with a contemporary scientific worldview. In place of the mind/body dualism, which was prevalent in the (...) Newtonian system, contemporary science supports a view of humanity as a psychosomatic unity. An ecologically relevant theological ethics also needs to be coherent with the orientation and findings of contemporary biological and ecological sciences. There is a need to think through ways that science and religion can most effectively be brought into a more systematic ecological interface. (shrink)

The article by Rachel Fabi and Daniel Goldberg contends that current priorities in the field of bioethics perpetuate injustices and inequities. This is because funding is one of the main drivers of...

Donald A. Barr's Introduction to U.S. Health Policy: The Organization, Financing, and Delivery of Health Care in America (second edition, 2007) offers a lucid and informative overview of the U.S. health system and the dilemmas policy makers currently face. Barr has provided a balanced introduction to the way health care is organized, financed, and delivered in the United States. The thirteen chapters of the book are quite comprehensive in the topics they cover. Even those knowledgeable about the U.S. health care (...) system are likely to find much to stimulate their thinking in the text. The book can also appropriately serve as a basic text for a health policy course or in the medical or nursing school curriculum. (shrink)

Donald A. Barr's Introduction to U.S. Health Policy: The Organization, Financing, and Delivery of Health Care in America (second edition, 2007) offers a lucid and informative overview of the U.S. health system and the dilemmas policy makers currently face. Barr has provided a balanced introduction to the way health care is organized, financed, and delivered in the United States. The thirteen chapters of the book are quite comprehensive in the topics they cover. Even those knowledgeable about the U.S. health care (...) system are likely to find much to stimulate their thinking in the text. The book can also appropriately serve as a basic text for a health policy course or in the medical or nursing school curriculum. (shrink)