Global Health & Human Rights

  • Read more: Live Blogging: The Globalization of Health Care, Legal and Ethical Issues

    Live Blogging: The Globalization of Health Care, Legal and Ethical Issues

    By Holly Fernandez Lynch This afternoon the Petrie-Flom Center co-hosted a panel discussion (with the HLS Library and the Harvard Global Health Institute) of Glenn Cohen‘s new edited volume out from Oxford University Press, The Globalization of Health Care: Legal and Ethical Issues.  Panelists were Professor Cohen, Sue Goldie, and Neel Shah; Einer Elhauge served as…

  • Read more: The Whitehall Studies and Human Rights

    The Whitehall Studies and Human Rights

    By Nathaniel Counts Professor M. G. Marmot et al. conducted two studies, Whitehall I and Whitehall II, in which they studied morbidity and mortality in the British civil service sector in the 1960s and the 1980s.  British civil servants are under the same plan with the National Health Service, so the studies controlled for access…

  • Read more: A fundamental right to health? So they’re saying in Colombia…

    A fundamental right to health? So they’re saying in Colombia…

    By Julian Urrutia Perhaps surprisingly to some, Colombia has come much further along the path towards universal coverage than many developed countries in the world, including the US. Most of this progress happened precipitously starting in the early 1990’s: while in 1993 fewer than 5% of people in the lowest income quintile had access to…

  • Read more: Upcoming Event: Larry Temkin speaking on “Global Poverty: Why Should We Care?”

    Upcoming Event: Larry Temkin speaking on “Global Poverty: Why Should We Care?”

    By The Petrie-Flom Center Want to know more about the ethics of aid? Want to hear the inspiring talk that’s convinced students across the northeast to take global poverty seriously? Join Harvard High-Impact Philanthropy for our first talk of the semester with ethicist Larry Temkin! RSVP here for Global Poverty: Why Should We Care? a talk by…

  • Read more: Safe Surgery Checklists May Raise Unintended Ethical and Legal Questions, Especially in Low-Resource Settings

    Safe Surgery Checklists May Raise Unintended Ethical and Legal Questions, Especially in Low-Resource Settings

    By Matt Baum The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist is unusual as a patient-safety intervention in that it has been widely promoted as universally effective, i.e. effective both in high-income and resource-limited settings; checklists are now used in approximately 1800 hospitals worldwide. In a paper recently published in the journal, BMJ Open, Aveling and colleagues report the…

  • Read more: Police and Public Health in Partnership

    Police and Public Health in Partnership

    By Scott Burris The Global Commission on HIV and the Law recently conducted a web discussion of steps to implement the Commission’s recommendations for better harmonizing law and HIV control.  One of the questions for discussion was: What are examples of innovative or non-traditional partnerships that can be used to strategically advance human-rights based responses…

  • Read more: “How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Test Tube Meat (and Started Thinking It May Be Immoral NOT to Eat It)” Or “Hooray For Chickie Nobs!!??!!”

    “How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Test Tube Meat (and Started Thinking It May Be Immoral NOT to Eat It)” Or “Hooray For Chickie Nobs!!??!!”

    By I. Glenn Cohen If you were watching television this week you may have seen this clip of a taste test for hamburger meat grown in a “test tube” in London discussed here. The meat was grown from stem cells from existing cows used to grow 20,000 strands of tissue. Costing more than $330,000 to…

  • Read more: How global regulations are written

    How global regulations are written

    By Kevin Outterson In secret, during “trade” negotiations. Just one example: the 12 years of data exclusivity for biologics is currently US law, but that may get carved into stone in the new Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TIIP). Once enshrined in a trade agreement, this rule and thousands more will be immune to change…

  • Read more: India Aggressively Expanding Access to Medicines

    India Aggressively Expanding Access to Medicines

    By Ryan Abbott The Indian Federal Department of Pharmaceuticals has released a new Drugs (Prices Control) Order that expands the list of “essential” drugs subject to government price control. Currently, a 1995 order restricts prices on 74 bulk drugs and their formulations; the new order would control prices on a total of 348 medicines that…