The incident in May-June 2007 involving a U.S. citizen traveling internationally while infected with drug-resistant tuberculosis involved the U.S. federal government's application of its quarantine and isolation powers. The incident and the isolation order raised numerous important issues for public health governance, law, and ethics. This article explores many of these issues by examining how the exercise of quarantine powers provides a powerful lens through which to understand how societies respond to and attempt to govern threats posed by dangerous, contagious (...) pathogens. The article considers historical aspects of governmental power to quarantine and isolate individuals and groups; analyzes the current state of quarantine and isolation law in the United States in light of the recent incident with drug-resistant tuberculosis; and explores global aspects of public health governance and law highlighted by this incident. (shrink)

There is no more striking public health triumph than the demise of the “brown plague.” The cigarette was once the accoutrement of a good life, but smoking is now a tragic habit of the poor. By the mid‐1960s, half of all men and a third of women in the United States smoked. Today the national prevalence is 18 percent, with rates in major cities below 15 percent. A suite of policies drove down smoking rates—antismoking campaigns, taxation, clean air laws, package (...) labeling, and marketing curbs. These policies, and the resultant behavior changes, however, have diminishing returns. Is it possible that tobacco rates will remain relatively stagnant? If so, what “endgame” strategies might drive rates to negligible levels, say, lower than 5 percent? And if society does achieve such an audacious goal, how attentive should it be to the problems of social justice? (shrink)

The World Health Assembly adopted the new International Health Regulations on May 23, 2005. The new IHR represent the culmination of a decade-long revision process and an historic development for international law and public health. The new IHR appear at a moment when public health, security, and democracy have become intertwined, addressed at the highest levels of government. The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, for example, identified IHR revision as a priority for moving humanity toward “larger freedom.” This article analyzes (...) the new IHR and their implications for global health and security in the 21st century.The WHA instructed the WHO Director-General to revise the IHR in 1995 because the Regulations did not provide an effective framework for addressing the international spread of disease. Doubts about the IHR's effectiveness had, however, been present long before 1995. The critiques identified the narrow scope of the regulations, the lack of compliance by states, and the absence of a strategy for responding to rapid changes in public health's global economic and technological environments. (shrink)

In 2000, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Environmental Health issued a report that explored some of the ways in which “sprawl” impacts public health. The report has generated great interest, and state health officials are beginning to discuss the relationship between land use and public health. The CDC report has also produced a backlash. For example, the Southern California Building Industry Association labeled the report “a ludicrous sham” and argued that the CDC should stick (...) to “fighting physical diseases, not defending political ones.”In retrospect, it is probably unfortunate that this report was funded by an organization called “Sprawl Watch.” “Spraw” is a word that has no clear meaning but is applied to a huge range of issues involving suburban development. (shrink)

In 2000, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Environmental Health issued a report that explored some of the ways in which “sprawl” impacts public health. The report has generated great interest, and state health officials are beginning to discuss the relationship between land use and public health. The CDC report has also produced a backlash. For example, the Southern California Building Industry Association labeled the report “a ludicrous sham” and argued that the CDC should stick (...) to “fighting physical diseases, not defending political ones.”In retrospect, it is probably unfortunate that this report was funded by an organization called “Sprawl Watch.” “Spraw” is a word that has no clear meaning but is applied to a huge range of issues involving suburban development. (shrink)

This paper is one of four interrelated action papers resulting from the 2008 National Summit on Legal Preparedness for Obesity Prevention and Control. Summit participants engaged in discussions on the current state of the law with respect to obesity, nutrition and food policy, physical activity, and physical education. Participants also identified gaps in the law at all jurisdictional levels and relevant to numerous sectors and disciplines that have a stake in obesity prevention and control.The companion paper, “Assessment of Laws (...) and Legal Authorities for Obesity Prevention and Control,”identified numerous laws and policies enacted to target the three domains of healthy lifestyles, healthy places, and healthy societies. That paper identified several gaps in the law that require attention and action. This paper addresses those gaps and presents applicable laws and legal authorities that public health professionals and lawyers can consider to implement to close the gaps. (shrink)

This paper is one of four interrelated action papers resulting from the 2008 National Summit on Legal Preparedness for Obesity Prevention and Control. Summit participants engaged in discussions on the current state of the law with respect to obesity, nutrition and food policy, physical activity, and physical education. Participants also identified gaps in the law at all jurisdictional levels and relevant to numerous sectors and disciplines that have a stake in obesity prevention and control.The companion paper, “Assessment of Laws (...) and Legal Authorities for Obesity Prevention and Control,”identified numerous laws and policies enacted to target the three domains of healthy lifestyles, healthy places, and healthy societies. That paper identified several gaps in the law that require attention and action. This paper addresses those gaps and presents applicable laws and legal authorities that public health professionals and lawyers can consider to implement to close the gaps. (shrink)

This article investigates the distribution of power in Poland’s drug reimbursement policy in the early 2000s. We examine competing theoretical expectations suggested by neopluralism, historical institutionalism, corporate domination, and clique theory of the post-communist state, using data from a purposive sample of 109 semi-structured interviews and documentary sources. We have four concrete findings. First, we uncovered rapid growth in budgetary spending on expensive drugs for narrow groups of patients. Second, to achieve these favorable policy outcomes drug companies employed (...) two prevalent methods of lobbying: informal persuasion of key members of local cliques and endorsements expressed by patient organizations acting as seemingly independent “third parties.” Third, medical experts were co-opted by multinational drug companies because they relied on these firms for scientific and financial resources that were crucial for their professional success. Finally, there was one-way social mobility from the state to the pharmaceutical sector, not the “revolving door” pattern familiar from advanced capitalist countries, with deleterious consequences for state capacity. Overall, the data best supported a combination of corporate domination and clique theory: drug reimbursement in Poland was dominated by Western multinationals in collaboration with domestically based cliques. (shrink)

There has been considerable controversy surrounding the routine circumcision of male infants in the United States. This is of particular concern, since the medical establishments of all the other countries of the developed world have abandoned this procedure as having dubious benefits. This article examines the medical pros and cons of neonatal male circumcision in a historical perspective and suggests that the circumstances that led to its establishment as a routine practice are largely absent today. Reasons for its continued (...) use and ethical and moral issues associated with its practice are then examined closely, especially in light of the current debate surrounding female circumcision. The article concludes that the medical and ethical issues surrounding this practice should be more broadly debated until there is some consensus as to its benefits. Prudence dictates that until such a consensus emerges, the practice should be suspended. (shrink)

The analysis of historical literature allows to consider profoundly the development of national culture and science of the 18th-first half of the 20th centuries and the formation and change of different historical concepts. With the analysis of historical periods that are highlighted in the research, general trends in the changing of paradigms about Russian historical development were concluded, which were translated to mass historical consciousness from the beginning of the 18th century up to 1917. The (...) periods were closely connected with the specific political, historical and economic changes in Russian Empire and with the dominance of certain textbooks during this time. The books were selected because of a number of factors: their inclusion to the school curriculum, the number of publications, the equal number of textbooks devoted to different historical periods. For the analysis were used 19 textbooks, schoolbooks for different courses of secondary schools and primary schools. All the sources of educational literature were grouped into two concepts - officially-state and the liberal. Each publication was highlighted the dominant concept as a base for the whole textbook. There is also a characteristic of the concepts that are presented chronologically. The analysis represents school history books as an important source for the formation of state policy in the representing of Russian history, and, that is more important, for creation of the concept of the state of Russian history. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.1 (2000) 94-96 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition. Janet M. Atwill. London: Cornell University Press, 1998. Pp. xvi + 235. $35.00 hard cover. Much like Weimar, Germany, American civil society has been buffeted for a half-century by both the lunatic right, hiding behind the mask of religious freedom, (...) and the lunatic left, sporting "pomo" (postmodern) tribal colors in the garb of academic freedom. In an earlier age, both might be burned at the stake; today, they are granted tax-exempt status. Readers seeking contributions to the life of the mind find their harangues both unpleasant and unrewarding. This book is unfortunately no exception.Atwill's title is deceptive. Her work is only marginally about either Aristotle or his rhetoric. She is more concerned to "reclaim" the liberal arts held hostage by the received tradition of Athenian democratic ideals. Vide: At issue are the character of the social identities of gender, race, and class and the nature of the social ties by which we are bound.... (3) Challenges to the... humanist paradigm... became the subject of... debates over cultural diversity, political correctness, and revisionist literary canons and historical accounts. Just what is at stake... is the type of subjectivity produced by the paideia of a multicultural curriculum (that subjects values, views of reality, and relationships to cultural and political authority. (12-13) So we are in for another salvo of pomo evangelism, with the usual suspects trotted out (Stanley Fish, Jacques Derrida, Pierre Bourdieu, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, and Edward Said) all with a view to rectifying the hegemonic white male biases of E. M. Cope, and rhetoric's four B's (Baldwin, Burnet, Burkhardt, and Hans Baron).Were Atwill offering a New Age update of Cope's commentary, her project might hold promise. Embers of such potential glow throughout the [End Page 94] book. Thus, her passing remarks on the relation of techne and theoria to Greek medicine (74-79) and to the cultural demands of what amounts to a plantation society (107-8) bear consideration. And her deconstruction of Cope's work as a managerial art grounded in associationist psychology (192-200) is especially insightful.Where the book disappoints is its clumsiness: it is simultaneously pedantic and superficial. On the first count, the author shows wide acquaintance with the standard commentaries on classical culture, but she seems often to be adrift in an ocean of secondary sources. For example, she is more likely to discuss Kennedy's treatment of Aristotle than Aristotle himself (58). And so it goes: Wright on Empedocles (90), Crane on Cicero (31), Woods on Cope (200). Indeed, it is difficult to tell from the book if the author's command of classical Greek extends much beyond Liddell and Scott.In addition to her overdependency on secondary sources, Atwill disregards historical contexts in pushing her quirky pomo readings to the fore. To cite only a few of these: For Plato, expertise is equivalent to function, and function determines one's place in the hierarchical order of the state. (30)... Physis (nature) or faculty equals function equals place in the social order. (141) [For Aristotle,] private property is the means of both self-expression and self-knowledge; knowledge of the self would be impossible without the procurement of private property. The subject and object distinction, usually made in the context of epistemology, is relocated at the center of the notion of private property. (184-85) If Protagoras, Isocrates, and Cicero were appointed deans... today, I doubt that they would institute a curriculum based on principles of radical democracy. (209) Perhaps Atwill would prefer to pick her dean from among Che, Mao, Pol Pot, or Lenin. While such eccentric inferences may fit the bill for cultural studies, they flunk the test of impartiality. This is a commodification of pedantry--recycling fragments of academic publications to advocate a partisan position. But advocacy resting on innuendo, resentment, and polite sneering can never meet the standards of serious scholarship... (shrink)

There is a huge number of publications devoted to civil society. Nevertheless this theme is inexhaustible, because the very subject of it is multidimensional and changing along with the evolution of society. Alongside this, one of the key problems of the civil society theory is a problem of its perception in our mind. Answering these questions, the author, at first, stresses the necessity to differ three historical types of civil society: ancient classical polis, civil communities (...) of the Modern History and contemporary civil society. They all are substantially different inter se from the axiological point of view. That is a reason not to use the ideological and methodological curves developed for historically previous types of civil society for the analysis of contemporary one. Secondly, the author focuses attention upon epistemological aspect of the civil society theory, in particular he proposes to rethink the concept of “totality” not in a formal logic way but in the “logic” of living systems in order to be able by means of this concept to express the unity of the diversity of social system. Thirdly, the author treats the concept of “citizen” in informal sense, stresses its existential, personal content and contemplates it through the dialectical relation of “totality-peculiarity-individuality.” Fourthly, the author researches the phenomenon of contemporary civil society as a counterpart of a state in the complex society the main features of which are the diversity and individuality. He comes to the conclusion that the civil society is not a society in common sense, but rather is some kind of “soil structure,” so called “social mycelium” that fertilizes social system with new opportunities. In the final part of the article author gives the example of one of the approaches to estimate the degree of maturation of civil society, proposed by the world-wide international organization “Civicus.” He stresses that the logic of power distribution in contemporary society presupposes cooperation of different actors, and one of the most influential of them is the civil society. (shrink)

In the last years of its history, the Ukrainian ethnic group faced numerous external and internal challenges, which, to a large extent, were the result of its previous genesis and profound transformations in public consciousness. At the same time, one of the central stereotypes of the domestic political and legal mentality is the idea of truth and justice as a basic social ideal and the basis of the legal order. Analysis of research and publications. The problem of mentality and the (...) formation of behavioral stereotypes has been of interest to domestic and foreign scientists for a long time. The concept of «mentality» is most widespread in the writings of the French historical school «Annals». The scientific work of M. Blok, F. Braudel, M. Vovel, J. Le Hoff, J. Lefebvre, L. Fevre, R. Mandr and other scientists reveals the content of mentality and its structures, as well as the peculiarities of their influence on everyday life and activities of individuals who lived in different historical eras. The purpose and objectives of the article. In this article, the authors aim to analyze the idea of truth-justice as a tool for transforming the legal mentality of the Ukrainian ethnic group and to show its influence on the content of its behavioral stereotypes. Research methodology. The methodology of this research has a complex nature and is based on a socio-philosophical and philosophical-legal analysis of the behavioral guidelines of Ukrainians in the field of legal understanding. The results. The social ideology, developed on the basis of ancient social ideas and stereotypes of the national legal mentality, should become a tool for correcting such destructive phenomena in the state-building discourse as legal nihilism, anarchism, civic passivity, corruption, nepotism, etc. At the same time, the concepts of truth-justice, will-freedom and fraternity-equality are key in Ukrainian legal culture. Discussion. The interpretation of this idea in scientific opinion is not unambiguous. This idea clearly manifests itself in the context of the opposition between Truth and Evil in the national culture. Truth is inseparable from human existence and daily activities. The idea of truth is closely related to the idea of justice, which, according to many researchers, is a later, more rational and clearly defined phenomenon derived from truth. Justice as a socio-philosophical phenomenon is intended to act as a kind of moral measure of relations between individuals in society. It is considered as an authoritative criterion for establishing the correspondence between the nature of human activity and its assessment by the social community. Conclusions. Destructive behavioral stereotypes of the Ukrainian ethnic group that were formed, among other things, under the influence of factors of stressogenesis can be corrected with the help of the legal ideology of state building, which should be based on the content of the idea of truth and justice. The developed ideology should be based on the most stable constructive guidelines of the national legal mentality, organically complementing and ideologically justifying them. (shrink)

Few novel or emerging infectious diseases have posed such vital ethical challenges so quickly and dramatically as the novel coronavirus SARS‐CoV‐2. The World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern and recently classified Covid‐19 as a worldwide pandemic. As of this writing, the epidemic has not yet peaked in the United States, but community transmission is widespread. President Trump declared a national emergency as fifty governors declared state emergencies. In the coming weeks, hospitals will become overrun, (...) stretched to their capacities. When the health system becomes stretched beyond capacity, how can we ethically allocate scarce health goods and services? How can we ensure that marginalized populations can access the care they need? What ethical duties do we owe to vulnerable people separated from their families and communities? And how do we ethically and legally balance public health with civil liberties? (shrink)

The process of Slovak political tradition formation during the establishment of an independent state is discussed in the article. Special attention is paid to the authoritarian tendencies, which developed after the breakup of Czechoslovakia, atypical for Central and Eastern Europe character of political transformation and the establishment of the entire state power system are analyzed. A brief historical background of the evolution of ‘the Slovak question‘ and its influence on the development of the state is given. (...) Authors highlight features of the social structure of Slovakia, emphasizing the special mentality, greatly influenced on the formation of the political system of the state in historical perspective. It is also noted, that formation of political tradition in Slovakia at the end of the twentieth century was marked by constant struggle between coalition and the opposition, which led to increased political instability in 1995-1997, which contributed to the emergence of the political tendencies, called ‘Slovak way of transformation‘. This had an impact on the integration processes in the state, which in 1994 declared its desire to join the European Union. The authors conclude that as long as the disparate political forces were unable to find a compromise and to determine priority in order to improve life of society rather than their personal ambitions, the Slovak political life was in a state of stagnation. (shrink)

Health inequalities are embedded in a complex array of social, political, and economic inequalities. Responding to health inequalities will require systematic action targeting all the underlying (“upstream”) social determinants that powerfully affect health and well‐being. Systemic inequalities are a major reason for the rise of modern populism that has deeply divided polities and infected politics, perhaps nowhere more so than in the United States. Concerted action to mitigate shocking levels of inequality could be a powerful antidote to nationalist populism. A (...) basic yet critical start to addressing health inequalities is to recognize them, which demands improving data collection and analysis. Certainly, global indicators show vast progress in reducing poverty and extending life. Yet aggregate health data mask a deeper reality: health gains have disproportionately benefited the well‐off, leaving the poor and middle‐class behind. (shrink)

This article deals with a foreign policy question of extraordinary importance: what responsibilities do States have to provide economic and technical assistance to other States that have high levels of need affecting the health and life of their citizens? The question is important for a variety of reasons. There exist massive inequalities in health globally, with the result that poorer countries shoulder a disproportionate burden of disease and premature death. Average life expectancy in Africa is nearly 30 years shorter than (...) in the Americas or Europe. In one year alone, an estimated 14 million of the poorest people in the world died, while only an estimated four million would have died if this population had the same death rate as the global rich. (shrink)

In this article, Gostin and Archer explore the varied lenses through which governments are obligated to address humanitarian needs. States’responsibilities to help others derive from domestic law, political commitments, ethical values, national interests, and international law. What is needed, however, is clarity and detailed standards so that States can operationalize this responsibility, making it real for developing countries. Transnational cooperation needs to be more effective and consistent to provide assistance for the world's poorest and least healthy people.

Michael Bloomberg assumed office as the 108th mayor of New York City on January 1, 2002. As he leaves the mayoralty—having won re—election twice‐his public health legacy is bitterly contested. The public health community views him as an urban innovator—a rare political and business leader willing to fight for a built environment conducive to healthier, safer lifestyles. To his detractors, Bloomberg epitomizes a meddling nanny—an elitist dictating to largely poor and working—class people about how they ought to lead their lives. (...) His policies have sparked intense public, corporate, and political ire—critical of sweeping mayoral power to socially engineer the city and its inhabitants. Here, I seek to show how Bloomberg has fundamentally changed public health policy and discourse. He has used the engine of government to make New York City a laboratory for innovation‐raising the visibility of public health, testing policy effectiveness, and probing the boundaries of state power. Even though the courts have blocked some of his boldest initiatives, he has offered a paradigm for the “new public health”—reaching beyond infectious diseases to upstream risk factors in everyday life and the human habitat. I also critically probe various arguments designed to derail his policies, along with the overarching charge of unjustified paternalism. (shrink)

Human genomic information is invested with enormous power in a scientifically motivated society. Genomic information has the capacity to produce a great deal of good for society. It can help identify and understand the etiology and pathophysiology of disease. In so doing, medicine and science can expand the ability to prevent and ameliorate human malady through genetic testing, treatment, and reproductive counseling.Genomic information can just as powerfully serve less beneficent ends. Information can be used to discover deeply personal (...) attributes of an individual's life. That information can be used to invade a person's private sphere, to alter a person's sense of self- and family identity, and to affect adversely opportunities in education, employment, and insurance. Genomic information can also affect families and ethnic groups that share genetic similarities. (shrink)

Human genomic information is invested with enormous power in a scientifically motivated society. Genomic information has the capacity to produce a great deal of good for society. It can help identify and understand the etiology and pathophysiology of disease. In so doing, medicine and science can expand the ability to prevent and ameliorate human malady through genetic testing, treatment, and reproductive counseling.Genomic information can just as powerfully serve less beneficent ends. Information can be used to discover deeply personal (...) attributes of an individual's life. That information can be used to invade a person's private sphere, to alter a person's sense of self- and family identity, and to affect adversely opportunities in education, employment, and insurance. Genomic information can also affect families and ethnic groups that share genetic similarities. (shrink)

Paget Henry’s (1997; 2000) narratives about the domains of existence in relation to human/social agency raise interesting issues about the theory and praxis of Afro-Caribbean existential discourse. In it, even when the relationships between agency and the material, social and spiritual domains of existence were thematized differently according to the different phases of Afro-Caribbean philosophical thought, the problematic of agency among the three domains raises similar questions across the different phases of Afro-Caribbean philosophy in relation to the theory and praxis (...) of Afro-Caribbean existential discourse. The problem here relates to the charge whether enslaved and colonized people could be credited with cognitive, ethical and social agency in the face of a structure that presents different existential challenges to the ability of the Caribbean people to realise their personhood and live a worthwhile life. This paper argues that the existential issues raised by causal determinism—whether scientific, social or spiritual, rear their ugly heads across the three domains of existence and also through the historical and analytical phases of Afro-Caribbean philosophical thought. The thesis supported in this paper is that, contrary to western scholarship, the Caribbean people have always possessed agency and have used this to overcome existential challenges at different phases of their history. The question whether they have always succeeded in doing this is a different question. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: Rawls Against Capitalism Rawls's Critique of “Welfare State Capitalism” Rawls (and Meade) on the Aims and Features of “Property‐Owning Democracy” Putting the Democracy into Property‐Owning Democracy: POD and the Fair Value of the Political Liberties Power, Opportunity, and Control of Capital: POD and Fair Equality of Opportunity Power, Status, and Self‐Respect: POD, the Difference Principle, and the Value of Equality Welfare State Capitalism and Property‐Owning Democracy: Ideal Types, Public Policy, and Real Politics (...) Conclusion ‐ Liberty, Equality, and Property‐Owning Democracy References. (shrink)

Law is an essential tool for public health practice, and the use of a systematic legal framework can assist with preventing chronic diseases and addressing the growing epidemic of obesity.The action options available to government at the federal, state, local, and tribal levels and its partners can help make the population healthier by preventing obesity and decreasing the growing burden of associated chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses (...) the four-part systematic legal framework commonly referred to as “public health legal preparedness” to demonstrate the essential role law can play for any public health issue. This paper uses the “laws and legal authorities” component of the framework and should be considered in combination with the competencies, coordination, and information-best practices components of the framework. (shrink)

Law is an essential tool for public health practice, and the use of a systematic legal framework can assist with preventing chronic diseases and addressing the growing epidemic of obesity.The action options available to government at the federal, state, local, and tribal levels and its partners can help make the population healthier by preventing obesity and decreasing the growing burden of associated chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses (...) the four-part systematic legal framework commonly referred to as “public health legal preparedness” to demonstrate the essential role law can play for any public health issue. This paper uses the “laws and legal authorities” component of the framework and should be considered in combination with the competencies, coordination, and information-best practices components of the framework. (shrink)

It is staggering to observe the new normal in America: 37.9 percent of adults are obese, and 70.7 percent are either obese or overweight. One out of every five minors is obese. The real tragedy, of course, is the disability, suffering, and early death that devastates families and communities. But all of society pays, with the annual medical cost estimated at $147 billion. The causal pathways are complex, but if we drill down, sugar is a deeply consequential pathway to (...) obesity, and the single greatest dietary source is sugar-sweetened beverages. The copious amount of sugar in the American diet is no accident. Industry practices and regulatory failures have fueled this explosion. Yet there are sensible, effective interventions that would create the conditions for healthier behaviors. What are the key interventions, and how can we overcome the social, political, and constitutional roadblocks? Tobacco control offers a powerful model, suggesting that success requires a suite of interventions working in concert: labeling, warnings, taxation, portion sizes, product formulation, marketing restrictions, and bans in high-risk settings such as schools and hospitals. Each intervention deserves detailed analysis, but I'm kick-starting scholarly and policy conversation by systematically laying out the major legal tools. (shrink)

The Turning Point Initiative is an initiative for which the Robert Wood Johnson and W.K. Kellogg foundations partnered in order to fund a group of states and a number of communities within each of those states to work through a planning process to look at ways to strengthen their public health systems at the state and local levels. Out of that process, the states and communities would come together at the national level to talk about what they had been (...) learning and what the issues were. There were a number of issues that resonated with all of the states. (shrink)

The Turning Point Initiative is an initiative for which the Robert Wood Johnson and W.K. Kellogg foundations partnered in order to fund a group of states and a number of communities within each of those states to work through a planning process to look at ways to strengthen their public health systems at the state and local levels. Out of that process, the states and communities would come together at the national level to talk about what they had been (...) learning and what the issues were. There were a number of issues that resonated with all of the states. (shrink)

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed into law the nation's first comprehensive health care reform bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Within weeks, twenty states filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of its most politically charged feature—an individual purchase mandate. By 2014, the bill requires most individuals to have health insurance. With certain exceptions (pertaining to income level and religious objections), individuals without qualifying coverage will pay an annual tax penalty. If anything, the tax penalty is too low (...) compared with the cost of insurance, so it may not provide sufficient incentive for healthy individuals to purchase insurance. But it remains controversial because it compels people to purchase coverage they choose not to have, raising the question whether Congress can lawfully and ethically require individuals to contract with, and transfer money to, a private party. (shrink)

A single defining question perennially intrigues scholars and practitioners interested in public heath: To what extent should human rights be limited to protect the community’s health and safety? The question achieved prominence in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001 and with the intentional dispersal of anthrax spores through the U.S. Postal Systein. The conflict between security and public health intensified with the development of the Model State Emergency Health Powers (...) Act, drafted by the Center for Law and the Public’s Health at the request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Model Act grants states consiclernble powers to control persons and property in response to a public health emergency, defined to inclucle bioterrorism or the appearance of novel or previously controlled or eradicated infectious agents or biological toxins. (shrink)

A single defining question perennially intrigues scholars and practitioners interested in public heath: To what extent should human rights be limited to protect the community’s health and safety? The question achieved prominence in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001 and with the intentional dispersal of anthrax spores through the U.S. Postal Systein. The conflict between security and public health intensified with the development of the Model State Emergency Health Powers (...) Act, drafted by the Center for Law and the Public’s Health at the request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Model Act grants states consiclernble powers to control persons and property in response to a public health emergency, defined to inclucle bioterrorism or the appearance of novel or previously controlled or eradicated infectious agents or biological toxins. (shrink)

A single defining question perennially intrigues scholars and practitioners interested in public heath: To what extent should human rights be limited to protect the community’s health and safety? The question achieved prominence in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001 and with the intentional dispersal of anthrax spores through the U.S. Postal Systein. The conflict between security and public health intensified with the development of the Model State Emergency Health Powers (...) Act, drafted by the Center for Law and the Public’s Health at the request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Model Act grants states consiclernble powers to control persons and property in response to a public health emergency, defined to inclucle bioterrorism or the appearance of novel or previously controlled or eradicated infectious agents or biological toxins. (shrink)

The adoption of the new International Health Regulations in May 2005 represents an historic development for international law and public health. This article describes the IHR revision process and analyzes why the new IHR constitute an advance in global health governance.

Most people think of preemption as a technical, constitutional doctrine, but it is pivotally important to health and safety and opens the door to broad judicial discretion. The Rehnquist and Roberts Courts’ jurisprudence, with its support for both business and preemption, has been distinctly antiregulatory, invalidating major state public health rules in occupational safety, tobacco control, and motor vehicle safety, among other things.1 And apart from these antiregulatory stances, the Supreme Court has also been maddeningly inconsistent. Consider three relatively (...) recent cases. In its 2008 decision in Riegel v. Medtronic, Inc., the Court held that federal law bars injured consumers from challenging the .. (shrink)

The relevance of the research topic. After the World War II the leaders and intellectuals of the world were forced to look for new principles and methods of management. New theories for analysis of complex systems appeared. The D. Meadows’ group from the Club of Rome and other analysts discovered the fact of the deepening humanity in an irreversible and deadly crisis. Up to now, economists and politicians have not offered a way to guarantee rescue. However, there is a consensus (...) that hopes can be linked to the development of education and science in the world. The phrase “internationalization of higher education ” is used more and more often, and the number of scientific works is growing rapidly. However, in our opinion, the phenomenon of IHE is perceived superficially because of inattention to the latest scientific achievements, which are not followed by humanities scholars. This caused our interest and stimulated the desire to prove that global process of IHE started in accordance with the laws of the evolution of industrial production. The purpose of our study is to apply the theory of analysis of very large systems to the phenomena of kinds and variants internationalization to obtain the most probable scenarios for human progress. The task of the study is seen in the critical analysis of the trend we noted in the process of training the PhD-level professional in space and time and transforming the figure of a young worker from a national to an international “product” of the systems of education and training. The methodology of the research was dictated by the chosen goal and tasks under the pressure of the grandiose object – a complex of educational systems in a globalized planet environment. This is due to the use of the means of many sciences, theories of systemic research and a multidisciplinary approach in the conditions of global evolutionism. The results of the study in their essence, are still based on historical methods, in conjunction with the achievements of young sciences – synergetics, theories of complex systems, and others. An original table was created to match the agrarian, industrial and informational societies – those within which the system of higher education had been developed. The direction of its characterization has proven that the autonomy of universities has been diminished at present, the size of the whole system and its orientation towards political and economic demands have increased. It is indicated at the time when the high school began to lose its national character and to acquire features of internationality. It is noted that this coincided with the growth of the volume and impact of globalization and its study mainly within the humanities. The widespread representation of the interaction in higher education with the influences of globalization and internationalization, the basic definitions and differentiation, etc. is presented. The newest data on internationalization within the universities and far beyond them in state and interstate institutions are presented. The conclusions and recommendations formulated and proved the main hypothesis of our study and its main result. It consists in the fact that the higher school in general began to reproduce the path of industry with its variant of internationalization – a combination of products of many countries. We argue that in higher education the division of time and space of educational programs, institutions, places of internship, etc. began. Instead of ensuring PhD competences within a single state, basic schooling is found to be more profitable in one place, the profile secondary is in the other, the baccalaureate or master’s program in the country “A”, postgraduate study somewhere in “B”, the final professional development in the best world’s centers of MBA or some other training in London or Harvard. From this follows the following conclusion: Ukraine’s resources are already inadequate for the preparation of national personnel of the highest world quality. Such a “product” has already become international. (shrink)

What are the health impacts of President Trump's January 27, 2017, executive order suspending the resettlement of refugees and temporarily banning entry of nationals from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen? Even if the President's constitutional arguments are credible, the order is deeply troubling under international law and humanitarian values. Under the 1967 Refugee Protocol, the United States has assumed a legal obligation to examine the claims of asylum seekers who reach U.S. territory without discrimination based on race, (...) nationality, or religion. Congress has delegated the decision as to how many refugees to accept to the president. Still, the executive order runs contrary to the principle of solidarity—which includes the fair sharing of responsibilities and burdens in accepting endangered individuals. Migrating doctors and nurses fill much of America's health care resources shortfall. The executive order also undermines science and academia, which depend on the free flow of knowledge and the spread of ideas. (shrink)

Can Congress require AIDS service organizations to pledge fidelity to the government's view opposing prostitution as a condition of receiving funding? This term, the Supreme Court will decide whether the First Amendment permits such censorship in USAID v. Alliance for Open Society International (AOSI). The 2008 legislation reauthorizing the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) requires host countries to support “activities promoting abstinence, delay of sexual début, monogamy, and fidelity.” PEPFAR's “conscience clause” allows organizations with a moral or (...) religious objection to opt out of providing services to patients with a sexual orientation of which they disapprove. In addition, the law requires grantees to adopt “a policy explicitly opposing prostitution” and to refrain from any speech or activities the government deems “inconsistent” with that policy. The antiprostitution pledge extends not only to what a recipient says or does with PEPFAR funds, but even to what it says or does with its own private funds. The government, however, has not enforced the pledge against U.S.‐based nongovernmental organizations partly because of a preliminary injunction granted by the lower courts. That injunction is now at risk if the Supreme Court upholds the loyalty oath. (shrink)

The Flint, Michigan, lead drinking water crisis is perhaps the most vivid current illustration of health inequalities in the United States. Since 2014, Flint citizens—among the poorest in America, mostly African American—had complained that their tap water was foul and discolored. But city, state, and federal officials took no heed. In March 2016, an independent task force found fault at every level of government and also highlighted what may amount to criminal negligence for workers who seemingly falsified water-quality results, (...) allowing the people of Flint to continue to be exposed to water well above the federally allowed lead levels. It would have been possible to prevent lead seeping into the drinking water by treating the pipes with federally approved anticorrosives for around $100 per day. But today the cost of repairing the Flint water system is estimated at $1.5 billion, and fixing the ageing and lead-laden system across the United States would cost at least $1.3 trillion. How will Flint residents get justice and fair compensation for the wrongs caused by individual and systemic failures? And how will governments rebuild a water infrastructure that is causing and will continue to cause toxic conditions, particularly in economically marginalized cities and towns across America? (shrink)

This book is concerned with the connection between the formal structure of agency and the formal structure of genocide. The contributors employ philosophical approaches to explore the idea of genocidal violence as a structural element in the world. Do mechanisms or structures in nation-states produce types of national citizens that are more susceptible to genocidal projects? There are powerful arguments within philosophy that in order to be the subjects of our own lives, we must constitute ourselves specifically as national subjects (...) and organize ourselves into nation states. Additionally, there are other genocidal structures of human society that spill beyond historically limited episodes. The chapters in this volume address the significance--moral, ethical, political--of the fact that our very form of agency suggests or requires these structures. The contributors touch on topics including birthright citizenship, contemporary mass incarceration, anti-black racism, and late capitalism. Logics of Genocide will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy, critical theory, genocide studies, Holocaust and Jewish studies, history, and anthropology. (shrink)

We examine the role of the American Psychological Association (APA) in the weaponization of American psychology post-9/11. In 2004, psychologists’ involvement in the detention and interrogation of terrorist suspects generated controversy over psychological ethics in national security (PENS). Two signal events inflamed the controversy. The 2005 APA PENS Report legitimized clinical psychology consultation in support of military/intelligence operations with detained terrorist suspects. An independent review, the 2015 Hoffman Report, found APA collusion with the US Department of Defense in producing the (...) APA PENS Report and subsequent policies. Ongoing activities within APA to weaponize psychology sharpened the controversy. The authors—two psychologists and four former military/intelligence professionals—bring a military/intelligence operational perspective to detail two neglected areas of collateral damage. The first is the toll on psychology as a scientific enterprise. The second is covert influence on professional associations for incompatible security-sector objectives. We establish epistemic, historical, institutional, legal, and operational foundations for evaluation of these damages, as well as implications for APA and related professional associations in the ongoing Global War on Terror. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Religious Pluralism and Christian TruthJoseph S. O’Leary has been named recipient of the 1998 Frederick J. Streng Book Award for his 1996 volume, Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth. Dr. O’Leary was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1949. He studied literature, theology, and philosophy in Maynooth, Rome, and Paris. After teaching briefly in the United States (University of Notre Dame and Duquesne University), he moved to Japan in 1983. He (...) has worked in association with the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture and currently teaches English literature at Sophia University (with special emphasis on Joyce and the modernist period) and a course on Japanese values at International Christian University.He has been working on a trilogy in fundamental theology that has taken on an increasingly interreligious character. The first volume is Questioning Back: The Overcoming of Metaphysics in Christian Tradition (Minneapolis: Winston/Seabury, 1985), reviewed in Buddhist-Christian Studies in 1987; a French version is in preparation. The second volume appeared first as La verite chretienne a l’age du pluralisme religieux (Paris: Cerf, 1994) and then as Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth (Edinburgh University Press, 1996). Joseph O’Leary is also coeditor of Heidegger et la question de Dieu (Paris: Grasset, 1980) and Buddhist Spirituality (vols. 8 and 9 of World Spirituality, New York: Crossroad, 1993 and 1999).Terry Muck: Why did you write this book?Joseph O’Leary: My earlier book, Questioning Back: The Overcoming of Metaphysics in Christian Tradition, advocated deconstruction of the Greek and Hebrew elements in Christian theology—the need for a radical retrieval of the tradition in the spirit of Heidegger’s “step back” from metaphysical systems to the original phenomena. In Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth, I broadened the horizon to see all religion as historical, cultural constructs growing and changing through mutual interaction. Living in Japan brought me a liberating sense of historical and cultural relativity and with it the sense that the Christian tradition should be thought of as an essentially incomplete project, always reaching out to other traditions in search of a fuller vision.But that discovery did not mean giving up on the Christian tradition.No. Rather than sitting back and enjoying the pluralism, I found myself more and more concerned with the question of truth. Followers of Jacques Derrida assured me that “truth” has been exposed as a historical myth. Struggling with Derrida I found rather a recontextualization of the value of truth. Moreover, the “situated truth” (always relative to a given context in culture and praxis) of historically formulated dogmatic propositions turned out to be quite defensible despite Derrida’s demolition [End Page 239] of notions of truth as totality (Hegel) or truth as presence (Heidegger). Christianity has nothing to fear from opening itself up to its historical relativity. Buddhism has long accepted the provisionality of all religious expressions. I focused especially on the notion of skillful means and on the theory of the two truths (conventional and ultimate) in Madhyamaka Buddhism.What does this “opening up” do to traditional Christian doctrines?The notion of God is not only compatible with such a relativized view of the status of religious language, but demands it. The biblical discourse about God consists in a constant deconstruction of old images of God by new ones. As for the role of Jesus Christ, Incarnation is an ongoing event in that the historical significance of Jesus is still unfolding. The uniqueness of Jesus resides not in some ontological amalgamation of divinity and humanity but in the specifics of his historical role. God’s Word is spoken in other ways elsewhere, indeed is spoken in all things, and its specifically “fleshly” (human and historical) and “eschatological” manifestation in the unfolding of the Jesus story should not be divorced from these wider contexts.How have these ideas been received?The most flattering response has come from the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies in granting me the Frederick J. Streng Book Award. Streng’s book, Emptiness, which I read in Pittsburgh in 1982, opened my eyes to the world of Madhyamaka thought.Any criticisms?Predictably, the book has come under fire from two opposing camps. The Revue Thomiste reviewer claimed that I could... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Political Theology of Climate Change by Michael S. Northcott, and: Restored to Earth: Christianity, Environmental Ethics, and Ecological Restoration by Gretel Van WierenKevin J. O’BrienA Political Theology of Climate Change Michael S. Northcott grand rapids, mi: eerdmans, 2013. 335 pp. $30.00Restored to Earth: Christianity, Environmental Ethics, and Ecological Restoration Gretel Van Wieren washington, dc: georgetown university press, 2013. 208 pp. $29.95These two excellent books, A Political Theology (...) of Climate Change by Michael S. Northcott and Restored to Earth by Gretel Van Wieren, offer distinct directions for Christian environmental ethics: Northcott develops a rigorous analysis of climate change as a failure of enlightenment rationality and politics, while Van Wieren argues that those who care about the earth can connect with it through the practice of ecological restoration. Northcott theologically defines a complex global problem; Van Wieren theologically engages a community-based solution. Each book advances Christian environmental ethics in important ways; considered together, they have much to teach about the content and methods of the field.Northcott’s A Political Theology of Climate Change argues that climate change is a “cosmopolitical crisis” and that Christians should embrace a more ecological and theological politics in response. Theologians and ethicists have long argued that environmental degradation has cosmological roots: The belief that human beings are separate from nature makes global-scale degradation and pollution acceptable. Northcott adds a nuanced political analysis, noting that modern politics is based on a denial “that the weather is political, or that politics influences the climate” (46). Enlightenment thinkers who laid the groundwork for contemporary political structures insisted that storms and floods were not divine responses to human behavior, so modern nation-states are premised on an ideological separation from nature. Climate change reveals the failure of such thinking, so the facts of climate change pose an inherently political challenge.Thus, failures to act on climate change are political failures. Mainstream politics cannot consider that economic growth is unsustainable because it is premised on ignorance about nature. Nations cannot collaborate to solve the problem because they have no common moral agreement “about the ends and goals of human life” (245). Any response to climate change that simply extends [End Page 198] the enlightenment project—by ascribing “rights” to the natural world, or by trusting existing secular political structures—is doomed to failure. Instead, climate change calls for a different cosmology and a different politics.Northcott argues that both can be found in the Christian tradition. Natural law thinking respects the relationship between human beings and external moral standards “set into the structure of the cosmos,” demanding careful accounting for the atmospheric consequences of human action (246). Virtue ethics teaches the ideal of politics as a “community of friendship and love,” nurturing practices of participation in the good life, lived with less consumption and less destructive energy (200).Northcott hopes that small-scale communities inspired by Christian cosmology and Christian politics will transition away from destructive practices and thereby demonstrate a new way of life to the world. His book concludes by reasserting that because climate change is a political problem, it is fundamentally a theological problem, calling human communities to “re-create the historic and customary connections between nature and culture, land and life, love for neighbour and nature which are central to the Jewish and Christian messianism of empire-challenging love” (316).In contrast to Northcott’s focus on political and philosophical failures, Gretel Van Wieren’s Restored to Earth seeks a “more positive, solution-oriented” approach to Christian ethics (viii). The book is about reconnecting humans with the natural world through ecological restoration, “the science and art of repairing ecosystems that have been damaged by human activities” (2), and it argues that restoration models moral life by creating physical, intellectual, emotional, communal, and spiritual connections with the natural world.Van Wieren begins with an interdisciplinary definition of ecological restoration and argues that views on the practice depend upon varied definitions of nature. She then moves to a nuanced account of restoration ecology as a spiritual practice (chapter 3) of community formation (chapter 4). Evocatively recounting a controlled prairie burn in Illinois on Maundy Thursday, Van Wieren... (shrink)

This book is a readers' companion to Simone Weil's The Need for Roots. It includes comprehensive and illuminating essays from recognized Weil scholars from the United States, Canada, England, France, and Germany, addressing the most pressing historical and contemporary aspects of Weil's thought and striking proposals. These include her substituting obligations for rights as the moral basis of society, her critique of our uprootedness and her proposals for rootedness, her critique of our dangerous understanding of greatness, the importance (...) of work for society, and her critique of modern science. This companion reader relies on the latest and most reliable work on the history of the Weil manuscript as provided by French scholars. It is unique in its thorough examination of the book's issues, which center around a spiritual renewal, first of France, but more broadly of western democracies. It includes a comprehensive introduction to the issues important to understanding The Need for Roots. Also included in the appendices are a new translation of Weil's preliminary study of obligations that was meant as an introduction to her work (but always published separately) as well as a translation of an address by Free French leader Andre Philippe-an address that helped set the moral issues that Weil would come to address. The book is both a scholarly contribution to understanding Weil's book and a striking set of conversations about many of the most pressing contemporary issues surrounding the possibilities of a spiritual and moral renewal of Western norms. The ultimate point of this companion is to stress the importance of Weil's The Need for Roots. In a time of clashing ideologies, politics of identity, and a desire, somehow in all that, to find a path to community and a way of respecting all human beings, The Need for Roots is now, more than ever, a timely book and one that needs careful examination and reflection. (shrink)

Zollinger wants to show that Bohr's principle of complementarity is applicable to human social interaction as well as to the sub-atomic realm. He therefore spends much time laying the foundations of his thesis, explaining the principle in its microphysical context. The human socio-political matrix is not merely analogous to the microphysical realm, for Zollinger, but is an evolutionary extension of it. Both are subject to complementarity in differing degrees of complexity. From a discussion of the tiny organism, he moves through (...) an account of primitive societies to a short review of the history of civilization to the present era. He toys with themes like male and female complementarity as a factor in human evolution. He describes the emergence of male characteristics from subordination to dominance, with the "new male" breaking the matriarchal order to build "the revolutionary rational order of dynamic political masculinity." His historical and anthropological accounts are on the whole superficial and stated in generalities that are long on speculation and short on research. Throughout, the book is plagued by obscurities caused by clumsy phrasing, private jargon, questions raised but not dealt with, and non sequiturs. Toward the end of the book, as he gets into the modern era, Zollinger finds himself in more familiar territory, and what he has to say is more solid than at the beginning. He suggests ways in which modern political man might better take into account the interdependency of the disparate elements of his society and integrate them into a whole of superior order. This is perhaps an important point, but here, as in other places in the book, the connection with Bohr is contrived, and Zollinger's model seems more properly to be Hegelian Aufhebung than Bohr's complementarity.--S. O. H. (shrink)

Digital participatory media offer urban social studies teachers a unique opportunity to foster students' civic skills and public voice while enhancing their understanding of social justice within a democratic society. This article addresses the continuation of a New York City 8th grade U.S. history teacher's journey to use digital tools to foster his students' collaborative and communication skills and to help them learn social justice oriented content. While doing so, he overcame challenges related to technology integration, curricular alignment, selection (...) of appropriate digital tools, and the need to cultivate his students' online academic norms. In doing so, he confronted Livingston's query about whether the use of technology necessitates a “fundamental transformation in learning infrastructure” and the need “to rethink the relations between pedagogy and society, teacher and pupil, and knowledge and participation”. He ended this part of his journey with these new challenges: how to enable his students to become navigators of their learning; ways to align the curriculum with his students' thinking; and, managing a dynamic instructional support system guided by his students' learning. His goal is “to forge a bridge between [his students'] media production and civic engagement'. (shrink)