Improving global health: Counting reasons why

Developing World Bioethics

Volumn 8, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 115-125

  Selgelid, Michael J ^a  

^a AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

Cumulative reasons; Developing world bioethics; Health rights; HIV AIDS in Africa; Infectious disease; International justice; Self interest

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BIOETHICS; COMMUNICABLE DISEASE; DEVELOPED COUNTRY; DEVELOPING COUNTRY; ECONOMICS; ETHICAL THEORY; ETHICS; HEALTH; HUMAN; HUMAN RIGHTS; INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION; MORALITY; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL JUSTICE; SOCIOECONOMICS;

BIOETHICS; COMMUNICABLE DISEASES; DEVELOPED COUNTRIES; DEVELOPING COUNTRIES; ETHICAL THEORY; HUMAN RIGHTS; HUMANS; INTERNATIONALITY; MORALS; SOCIAL JUSTICE; SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY; SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS; WORLD HEALTH;

EID: 48249150781     PISSN: 14718731     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1471-8847.2007.00185.x     Document Type: Article

References (42)

1. The argument is directed at both wealthy states and their citizens (who would need to provide political support for, and the tax funds required by, the policies in question).
2. N. Daniels. 1985. Just Health Care. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
3. J. Rawls. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
4. J. Rawls. 1999. The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
5. D. Moellendorf. 2002. Cosmopolitan Justice. Cambridge, MA: Westview;
6. T.W. Pogge. 2002. World Poverty and Human Rights. Cambridge: Polity Press.
7. United Nations (UN). 1999. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. First adopted and proclaimed in 1948. New York, NY: UN: Resolution 217 A (III). Available at: http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html [Accessed 8 Feb 2006].
8. Pogge, op. cit. note 5.
9. I am not arguing that this reason is decisive all by itself. Caveats provided in discussion of the first two reasons - e.g. 'these are two goals among many that should be taken into consideration, which is not to say that there are no countervailing reasons for not taking action' - apply to these last two reasons as well. I will avoid always repeating these caveats in what follows. Throughout this paper I am merely appealing to what I claim to be widely shared intuitions about the things that matter from the standpoint of ethics/justice (and later self-interest) without attaching any particular (or extreme) weight to the importance of the individual considerations I am enumerating.
10. J. Bentham. 1982 [1789]. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. J.H. Burns & H.L.A. Hart, eds. London: Methuen.
11. S. Scheffler. 1992. Human Morality. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
12. P. Singer. 1993. Practical Ethics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press;
13. P. Singer. 2002. One World: The Ethics of Globalization. Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company.
14. J. Sachs. 2005. The End of Poverty. London: Penguin: 204-205.
15. J. Diamond. 1998. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.
16. T. Barnett & A. Whiteside. 2002. AIDS in the Twenty-First Century: Disease and Globalization. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan;
17. M.J. Selgelid. Ethics, Economics, and AIDS in Africa. Developing World Bioeth 2004; 4: 96-105;
18. M.J. Selgelid. Ethics and Infectious Disease. Bioethics 2005; 19: 272-289.
19. S. Benatar. Global Disparities in Health and Human Rights: A Critical Commentary. Am J Public Health 1998; 88: 295-300;
20. S. Hunter. 2003. Black Death: AIDS in Africa. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.
21. D. Webb. 1997. HIV and AIDS in Africa. London: Pluto Press;
22. A. Whiteside & C. Sunter. 2000. AIDS: The Challenge for South Africa. Cape Town: Human and Rousseau and Tafelberg; Selgelid, 2004, op. cit. note 14; Selgelid, 2005, op. cit. note 14.
23. R. Packard. 1989. White Plague, Black Labour: Tuberculosis and the Political Economy of Health and Disease in South Africa. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
24. Pogge, op. cit. note 5. See also Singer, 2002, op. cit. note 11. Those who actively seek (i.e. do what they can) to change the status quo with regard to the problematic international practices/policies that Pogge is concerned about should be considered less responsible/complicit than others.
25. United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). 1999. Report on the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic. Geneva: UNAIDS. Available at: http://www.unaids. org/en/ [Accessed 1 Dec 2000].
26. Recent evidence shows that HIV and malaria likewise fuel the spread of one another. See L.J. Abu-Raddad, P. Patnaik & J.G. Kublin, Dual Infection with HIV and Malaria Fuels the Spread of Both Diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa. Science 2006; 314: 1603-1606.
27. Though the precautionary principle is controversial, its force is strongest in cases like this where reduction of risk entails only relatively minor cost.
28. National Intelligence Council (NIC). 2000. The Global Infectious Disease Threat and its Implications for the United States, National Intelligence Estimate, NIE 99-17D. Washington, DC: NIC. Available at: http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/nie99-17d.htm [Accessed 11 Jan 2007].
29. United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). 2005. AIDS Epidemic Update. Geneva: UNAIDS. Available at: http://www.unaids.org [Accessed 29 Jan 2006].
30. Institute of Medicine. 2003. The Resistance Phenomenon in Microbes and Infectious Disease Vectors: Implications for Human Health and Strategies for Containment. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
31. P. Farmer. 1999. Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press;
32. P. Farmer. 2003. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
33. Institute of Medicine. 2005. Scaling Up Treatment for the Global AIDS Pandemic. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
34. L. Garrett. 1995. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance. New York, NY: Penguin;
35. Garrett. 2000. Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health. New York, NY: Hyperion.
36. See M. Allen. 2001. Bush Targets Reduction of Global Poverty. Washington Post 18 July: A18. Available at: http://www.washingtonpost. com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contented=A10219-2001Jul17 [Accessed 2 Jan 2007].
37. National Intelligence Council, op. cit. note 22; Sachs, op. cit. note 12, pp. 332-335.
38. National Intelligence Council, ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Throughout, I have implicitly assumed that 'doing more' requires funding.
42. My general philosophical perspective - 'moderate pluralism' - is that (especially with regard to Rawlsian egalitarianism, utilitarianism and libertarianism) the theories considered in this paper are partly correct - because the goods they emphasize matter - and partly incorrect - because they (often) place too much weight on the goods they emphasize. My thinking is here influenced by Philip Kitcher.