scholarly journals Public Health, Ethics, and Human Rights: A Tribute to the Late Jonathan Mann

2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence O. Gostin
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Health And Human Rights ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Health Ethics

The late Jonathan Mann famously theorized that public health, ethics, and human rights are complementary fields motivated by the paramount value of human well-being. He felt that people could not be healthy if governments did not respect their rights and dignity as well as engage in health policies guided by sound ethical values. Nor could people have their rights and dignity if they were not healthy. Mann and his colleagues argued that public health and human rights are integrally connected: Human rights violations adversely affect the community's health, coercive public health policies violate human rights, and advancement of human rights and public health reinforce one another. Despite the deep traditions in public health, ethics, and human rights, they have rarely cross-fertilized—although there exists an important emerging literature. For the most part, each of these fields has adopted its own terminology and forms of reasoning. Consequently, Mann advocated the creation of a code of public health ethics and the adoption of a vocabulary or taxonomy of “dignity violation”.

scholarly journals Demandingness and Public Health Ethics

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Giubilini ◽  
Julian Savulescu
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Antimicrobial Resistance ◽  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
Coercive Measures ◽  
Health Ethics

Abstract Public health policies often require individuals to make personal sacrifices for the sake of protecting other individuals or the community at large. Such requirements can be more or less demanding for individuals. This paper examines the implications of demandingness for public health ethics and policy. It focuses on three possible public health policies that pose requirements that are differently demanding: vaccination policies, policy to contain antimicrobial resistance, and quarantine and isolation policies. Assuming the validity of the ‘demandingness objection’ in ethics, we argue that states should try to pose requirements that individuals would have an independent moral obligation to fulfil, and therefore that are not too demanding. In such cases, coercive measures are ethically justified, especially if the interventions also entail some benefits to the individuals; this is, for example, the case of vaccination policies. When public health policies need to require individuals to do something that is too demanding to constitute an independent moral obligation, states have an obligation to either provide incentives to give individuals non-moral reasons to fulfil a certain requirement – as in the case of policies that limit antibiotic prescriptions – or to compensate individuals for being forced to do something that is too demanding to constitute an independent moral obligation – as in the case of quarantine and isolation policies.

scholarly journals Global Justice and Human Rights: Health and Human Rights in Practice

1970 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Tarantola
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Global Response ◽  
Health And Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Specificity ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Key Dimensions

The origin and justification of human rights, whether anchored in biological theory, natural law theory, or interests theory, as well as their cultural specificity and actual value as international legal instruments are subject to ongoing lively debates. As theoretical and rhetorical discourses challenge and enrich current understanding of the value of human rights and their relevance to democratic governance, they have found their way into public health in recent decades and play today an increasing role in the shaping of health policies, programs and practice. Human rights define the obligations of states to their people and towards each other, create grounds for governmental accountability and inspire recognition of, and action on, factors influencing people’s attainment of the highest possible standard of health. This article highlights the evolution that has brought health and human rights together in mutually reinforcing ways. It draws from the experience gained in the global response to HIV/AIDS, summarizes key dimensions of public health and of human rights and suggests a manner in which these dimensions intersect in a framework for analysis and action.

scholarly journals Human Rights in a Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 219-252
Author(s):  
A. Zhebit
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Health Policies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
Travel Restrictions ◽  
The Face

The article is focused on the problem of human rights (HRs), limited or derogated from, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While addressing some HRs limitations, derogations and even abuses, and their consequent problems, the aim is to try to analyze policy, social, moral and personal dilemmas of HRs restrictions as well as motivations behind the types of public and social behavior, in the course of the pandemic, in response to the public measures of sanitation, social distancing and confinement, travel restrictions and social assistance, recommended by the WHO and selectively followed by governments. Learning from some old experience and deriving new lessons from the pandemic, as well as from public and social actions and reactions, the purpose of the present article is to assess whether or not public health policies in this context, implemented nationally or internationally, can promote change in the HRs paradigm in the face of the existing dilemmas and dichotomies in HRs, aggravated by the pandemic. The conclusion is that the extant HRs paradigm should be redefined to address better the political, social, economic, environmental and, especially, existential exigencies of “rainy times”, thus leading to the creation of a new universal HRs code or to harmonizing the existing one.

Human Rights and Public Health Ethics

2019 ◽  
pp. 46-56
Author(s):  
S. Matthew Liao
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Public Health Ethics ◽  
Moral Justification ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Basic Health ◽  
Health Ethics ◽  
The Right

This chapter relates human rights to public health ethics and policies by discussing the nature and moral justification of human rights generally, and the right to health in particular. Which features of humanity ground human rights? To answer this question, as an alternative to agency and capabilities approaches, the chapter offers the “fundamental conditions approach,” according to which human rights protect the fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life. The fundamental conditions approach identifies “basic health”—the adequate functioning of the various parts of our organism needed for the development and exercise of the fundamental capacities—as the object of a human right. A human right to basic health entails human rights to the essential resources for promoting and maintaining basic health, including adequate nutrition, basic health care, and basic education. Dutybearers include every able person in appropriate circumstances, as well as governments and government agencies, private philanthropic foundations, and transnational corporations.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document