ETHICS OF MANDATORY PREMARITAL HIV TESTING IN AFRICA: THE CASE OF GOMA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Despite decades of prevention efforts, millions of persons worldwide continue to become infected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) every year. This urgent problem of global epidemic control has recently lead to significant changes in HIV testing policies. Provider-initiated approaches to HIV testing have been embraced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, such as those that routinely inform persons that they will be tested for HIV unless they explicitly refuse (‘opt out’). While these policies appear to increase uptake of testing, they raise a number of ethical concerns that have been debated in journals and at international AIDS conferences. However, one special form of ‘provider-initiated’ testing is being practiced and promoted in various parts of the world, and has advocates within international health agencies, but has received little attention in the bioethical literature: mandatory premarital HIV testing. This article analyses some of the key ethical issues related to mandatory premarital HIV testing in resource-poor settings with generalized HIV epidemics. We will first briefly mention some mandatory HIV premarital testing proposals, policies and practices worldwide, and offer a number of conceptual and factual distinctions to help distinguish different types of mandatory testing policies. Using premarital testing in Goma (Democratic Republic of Congo) as a point of departure, we will use influential public health ethics principles to evaluate different forms of mandatory testing. We conclude by making concrete recommendations concerning the place of mandatory premarital testing in the struggle against HIV/AIDS

The Battle for the Soul of the Nation: Nationalist Polarization in the 2020 American Presidential Election and the Threat to Democracy

This article examines the nationalist rhetoric of Biden and Trump in the 2020 presidential election, focusing on how the candidates represented, and contested, the meaning of American national identity. To do so, we construct a novel analytical framework to undertake a contextual content analysis of Biden and Trump’s campaign tweets (n = 4,321). We demonstrate that the meaning of national identity was a key source of contestation in the election, and that the parameters of this contestation closely tracked a longstanding cleavage in American political culture between civic and ethnic nationalist traditions. Biden largely drew upon the civic nationalist tradition to defend a conception of American national identity that is grounded in liberal myths and symbols. By contrast, Trump largely drew upon the ethnic nationalist tradition to defend a conception of American national identity that is grounded in white American myths and symbols. Critically, both candidates used these opposing nationalist traditions to frame each other as a grave threat to the nation’s “true” identity and, ultimately, as un-American. This “nationalist polarization” of presidential politics is a troubling development for the future of American democracy

Infected Physicians & Invasive Procedures: Safe Practice Management

Buku ini mengungkapkan tentang peta peperangan di suriah dan juga sejarah pentingnya wilayah ini, serta posisi revolusi islam di suriah saat ini. Buku ini juga mengungkap sejarah panjang bumi khilafah yang hilang itu sejak sebelum dibebaskan oleh khalid bin walid hingga menjadi ibu kota Negara Khilafah di era Khilafah Umayyah.284 hlm.: ilus.; 21 cm