Evolving norms of north-south assistance will they be applied to HIV/AIDS?

The world is in the early stages of what will be the greatest health crisis in modern times. Millions of people—most of them in the world’s poor countries—are infected with HIV. The vast majority of these people will suffer and die from AIDS. The extent of this problem presents profound moral and ethical questions for the world’s wealthy people and countries, for it is they who are most able to assist the poor in addressing this tragedy. What is more, the spread of HIV and AIDS poses major threats to the interests of the developed countries. In short, HIV/AIDS presents the world with some of the most profound moral and practical challenges it has ever faced during peacetime. Nevertheless, developed countries have been very slow in responding to the international dimensions of this problem. They have instead focused on the relatively few people within their own borders at risk for HIV or suffering from AIDS, seemingly unwilling to recognize the greater challenges posed by the global spread of HIV. The rhetoric has started to change, but the developed countries have not backed this rhetoric with the substantial new and additional funds to assist the poor countries in coping with and reversing the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This essay examines this moral and practical problem in the context of North-South relations. It serves to highlight the need for much more international assistance to combat HIV/AIDS in the developing world

“We were fighting for our place”: Resisting gender knowledge regimes through feminist knowledge network formation

The transformative potential of feminist knowledge in the disciplines of entrepreneurship, business and management has arguably been hindered by persistent gender knowledge regimes that marginalise feminist scholarship and channel widely-applicable gender expertise into niche streams, conferences and publication outlets. Whilst offering valuable spaces for feminist knowledge production, removing gender expertise from mainstream fora reduces its centrality to broader debates, maintaining its marginality and limiting its impact. Taking a collaborative autoethnographic approach, we explore the formation and development of a UK-based organisation for feminist entrepreneurship scholars, the Gender and Enterprise Network, as a means of collective resistance to this perpetuation of enforced marginality. Our network challenges extant gender knowledge regimes and offers transformative opportunities within and outside of our respective organisations, providing insights for others wishing to form similar networks and contributing to ongoing debates on the value and valuing of feminist knowledge

PROTECTION FOR WHOM?

For several decades almost all the states have addressed the goal of ensuring an adequate supply of blood and blood products through the provision of "blood shield laws." These laws shield the blood industry from strict liability in the case of viral or other contamination of blood or its components. These laws were passed with little regard for other considerations, such as safety incentives. This article traces the development of the blood industry, its influence on state and national blood policy, and the consequences of such policy for people infected with hepatitis and HIV through blood and blood products. The authors conclude that the closed nature of the policy process has had negative consequences for the creation of blood policy that should balance concerns of both supply and safety. Copyright 2001 by The Policy Studies Organization.