Human Rights and the Challenges of Science and Technology

The expansion of the corpus of international human rights to include the right to water and sanitation has implications both for the process of recognizing human rights and for future developments in the relationships between technology, engineering and human rights. Concerns with threats to human rights resulting from developments in science and technology were expressed in the early days of the United Nations (UN), along with the recognition of the ambitious human right of everyone "to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications." This comment explores the hypothesis that the emerging concepts most likely to follow recognition of the human right to water primarily involve issues of science and technology, such as access to medicines or clean and healthy environment. Many threats to human rights from advances in science, which were identified in the past as potential, have become real today, such as invasion of privacy from electronic recording, deprivation of health and livelihood as a result of climate change, or control over individual autonomy through advances in genetics and neuroscience. This comment concludes by urging greater engagement of scientists and engineers, in partnership with human rights specialists, in translating normative pronouncements into defining policy and planning interventions

Poverty

This chapter addresses the challenge posed by poverty to the protection of human rights. Human rights define the entitlements considered necessary for a life of dignity in society, including the right to an adequate standard of living, that is, the right to be free from poverty. At this high level of abstraction, the elimination of poverty and realization of human rights are similar in that both clarify what needs to be done so that all human beings enjoy minimal standards of a decent existence. The context for this inquiry is the consensus regarding the imperative of poverty reduction and human rights realization, and the contested interpretations of the impact of globalization and financial crises on poverty and human rights. This context will be set out first, followed by a discussion of how international discourses on human rights and poverty diverge and, finally, how they converge

Human Rights: A Brief Introduction

Human rights constitute a set of norms governing the treatment of individuals and groups by states and non-state actors on the basis of ethical principles regarding what society considers fundamental to a decent life. These norms are incorporated into national and international legal systems, which specify mechanisms and procedures to hold the duty-bearers accountable and provide redress for alleged victims of human rights violations. After a brief discussion of the use of human rights in ethical, legal, and advocacy discourse and some historical background of the concept of human rights, this essay will examine the tensions between human rights and state sovereignty, the challenges to the universality of human rights, the enumeration of rights recognized by the international community, and the means available to translate the high aspirations of human rights into practice

Yaws.

Yaws is a non-venereal endemic treponemal infection caused by Treponema pallidum sub-species pertenue, a spirochaete bacterium closely related to Treponema pallidum ssp. pallidum, the agent of venereal syphilis. Yaws is a chronic, relapsing disease predominantly affecting children living in certain tropical regions. It spreads by skin-to-skin contact and, like syphilis, occurs in distinct clinical stages. It causes lesions of the skin, mucous membranes and bones which, without treatment, can become chronic and destructive. Treponema pallidum ssp. pertenue, like its sexually-transmitted counterpart, is exquisitely sensitive to penicillin. Infection with yaws or syphilis results in reactive treponemal serology and there is no widely available test to distinguish between these infections. Thus, migration of people from yaws-endemic areas to developed countries may present clinicians with diagnostic dilemmas. We review the epidemiology, clinical presentation and treatment of yaws

On Essentiality and the World Health Organization's Model List of Essential Medicines

BackgroundIn 1977 the World Health Organization created its first Model List of Essential Medicines—a list designed to aid countries in determining which medicines to prioritize on their National Essential Medicines Lists. In classifying drugs as “essential,” the World Health Organization has historically stressed drugs' ability to meet priority health needs of populations and cost.ObjectivesIn this paper we trace the fluctuations in the application of cost and priority status of disease as criteria for essential medicines throughout the reports published by the WHO Expert Committee on Selection and Use of Essential Medicines since 1977.MethodsWe analyzed essential medicines lists published on the World Health Organization website since 1977 for trends in criteria concerning cost and priority status of disease. Where, available, analyzed the World Health Organization Expert Committee analysis rationalizing why certain medicines were or were not added and were or were not removed.ResultsThe application of the criteria of cost and priority status of essential medicines has fluctuated dramatically over the years.ConclusionsThe definition of essential medicines has shifted and now necessitates a new consensus on normative definitions and criteria. A more standardized and transparent set of procedures for choosing essential medicines is required