Coming to terms with the past: truth, justice and/or reconciliation

Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: The TRC; Commissioning the Past, 11-14 June, 199

Facilitating Humanitarian Access to Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Innovation

Calls for intellectual property licensing strategies in the pharmaceutical and agricultural sectors that promote humanitarian access to product innovations for the benefit of the disadvantaged. Includes profiles of successful and promising strategies

Book review of Introduction to U.S. Health Policy: The Organization, Financing and Delivery of Health Care in America by Donald A. Barr

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

Human dignity as a criterion for science policy

3 pages.Debates the Bush administration's use of "human dignity" as a basis for federal policy governing scientific research

Implications d'AXIN2 et de l'instabilité microsatellite dans le développement des tumeurs du cortex-surrénalien

Les lésions tumorales cortico-surrénaliennes sont majoritairement des adénomes bénins et très rarement des carcinomes. Les altérations génétiques impliquées dans le développement des tumeurs cortico-surrénaliennes sporadiques, plus particulièrement au stade malin, demeurent à ce jour très peu connues. Lors de travaux récents menant à l’identification d’altérations génétiques de β-CATÉNINE nous avons constaté que plusieurs tumeurs présentaient une accumulation nucléo/cytoplasmique de la protéine β-CATÉNINE sans toutefois contenir de mutations pour ce gène. Nous avons donc émis l’hypothèse que, comme pour d’autres types de cancers, d’autres composants de la voie de signalisation Wnt/β-CATÉNINE, tel qu’AXIN2, pourrait être impliqués dans le développement des tumeurs du cortex surrénalien. De plus, plusieurs aberrations dans l’expression d’AXIN2 et de β-CATÉNINE sont associées à des tumeurs présentant de l’instabilité microsatellite dans d’autres types de cancer, notamment le cancer gastrique et colorectal. Nous avons donc étudié une cohorte de 30 adénomes, 6 carcinomes, 5 AIMAH, 3 hyperplasies ACTH-dépendante et 5 PPNAD ainsi que les lignées cellulaires de carcinomes cortico-surrénaliens humains H295R et SW13. Une étude préliminaire du statut MSI a également été réalisée sur 10 tumeurs contenant une mutation pour AXIN2 et/ou β-CATÉNINE. Nous avons trouvé des mutations d’AXIN2 dans 7% des adénomes (2/30) et 17% des carcinomes (1/6) cortico-surrénaliens. L’analyse fonctionnelle des mutations par immunohistochimie, analyse western blot et analyse de RT-PCR en temps réel a révélé une diminution de l’expression d’AXIN2 associée à cette mutation. L’analyse préliminaire MSI a démontré 1 échantillon AIMAH MSI-H, c’est-à-dire instable pour le locus BAT-25 et BAT-26 et 3 autres adénomes sécrétant de l’aldostérone instables seulement pour le locus BAT-26. Ainsi, ces travaux permirent d’identifier une nouvelle altération génétique associée au développement des tumeurs du cortex surrénalien en plus de rapporter pour la première fois la présence de MSI-H dans ce type de tumeurs.Adrenocortical lesions are mostly benign tumors and rarely carcinomas. From now on, genetic alterations implicated in sporadic adrecocortical tumour development remains largely unknown. In our previous work leading to identification of genetic alterations in β-catenin, we observed that many tumors presented a nucleo/cytoplasmic accumulation of β-catenin protein without β-catenin mutations. Thus, we hypothesised that, as for many others cancers, others components of the Wnt/ β-catenin signalling pathway, as AXIN2, are implicated in development of adrenocortical tumors. Also, many aberrations in AXIN2 and β-catenin expression have been reported in association with microsatellite instability in other types of cancers like gastroinstestinal and colorectal cancer. We have studied 30 adenomas, 6 carcinomas, 5 AIMAH, 3 ACTH-dependant hyperplasias and 5 PPNAD as well as the human carcinoma cancer cells lines H295R and SW13. Preliminary study for MSI was also realised on 10 tumors harbouring AXIN2 and/or Β-CATENIN mutations. We have found AXIN2 mutations in 7% of adrenocortical adenomas (2/30) and 17% of adrenocortiocal carcinomas. Functional analysis of this mutation by immunohistochemical, western blot and real-time RT-PCR analysis revealed a down-regulation of AXIN2 expression associated with this mutation. Preliminary analysis of MSI results in 1 AIMAH sample MSI-H, which means instable for BAT-25 and BAT-26 locus, and 2 aldosterone adenomas were unstable for BAT-26 locus. This work identified a new genetic alteration involved in adrenocortical tumour development and report for the first time MSI-H in this type of tumor

What could a strengthened right to health bring to the post-2015 health development agenda?: interrogating the role of the minimum core concept in advancing essential global health needs.

BACKGROUND: Global health institutions increasingly recognize that the right to health should guide the formulation of replacement goals for the Millennium Development Goals, which expire in 2015. However, the right to health's contribution is undercut by the principle of progressive realization, which links provision of health services to available resources, permitting states to deny even basic levels of health coverage domestically and allowing international assistance for health to remain entirely discretionary. DISCUSSION: To prevent progressive realization from undermining both domestic and international responsibilities towards health, international human rights law institutions developed the idea of non-derogable "minimum core" obligations to provide essential health services. While minimum core obligations have enjoyed some uptake in human rights practice and scholarship, their definition in international law fails to specify which health services should fall within their scope, or to specify wealthy country obligations to assist poorer countries. These definitional gaps undercut the capacity of minimum core obligations to protect essential health needs against inaction, austerity and illegitimate trade-offs in both domestic and global action. If the right to health is to effectively advance essential global health needs in these contexts, weaknesses within the minimum core concept must be resolved through innovative research on social, political and legal conceptualizations of essential health needs. SUMMARY: We believe that if the minimum core concept is strengthened in these ways, it will produce a more feasible and grounded conception of legally prioritized health needs that could assist in advancing health equity, including by providing a framework rooted in legal obligations to guide the formulation of new health development goals, providing a baseline of essential health services to be protected as a matter of right against governmental claims of scarcity and inadequate international assistance, and empowering civil society to claim fulfillment of their essential health needs from domestic and global decision-makers