Category: Human Rights

TOMORROW: Frances Kamm’s Bioethical Prescriptions: Book Talk and Panel Discussion

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Please join us on February 27 at 2:00pm in Wasserstein 1019 at the Harvard Law School as we launch Professor Frances Kamm’s latest book, Bioethical Prescriptions: To Create, End, Choose, and Improve Lives (Oxford University Press, January 2014). The book showcases Professor Kamm’s articles on bioethics as parts of a coherent whole, with sections devoted to death and dying; early life (on conception and use of embryos, abortion, and childhood); genetics and other enhancements (on cloning and other genetic technologies); allocating scarce resources; and methodology (on the relation of moral theory and practical ethics).

Panelists include:

  • Frances Kamm, Littauer Professor of Philosophy & Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government; Professor of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Harvard University; Former Senior Fellow, Petrie-Flom Center
  • Norman Daniels, Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health, Harvard School of Public Health
  • Thomas (Tim) Scanlon, Jr., Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Harvard University
  • Moderator: Christopher T. Robertson, Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Associate Professor, James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona

This event is free and open to the public. For questions, please contact petrie-flom@law.harvard.edu or 617-496-4662.

Sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics; Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University; and the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard Medical School; with support from the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund.

2/27: Frances Kamm’s Bioethical Prescriptions: Book Talk and Panel Discussion

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Please join us on February 27 at 2:00pm in Wasserstein 1019 at the Harvard Law School as we launch Professor Frances Kamm’s latest book, Bioethical Prescriptions: To Create, End, Choose, and Improve Lives (Oxford University Press, January 2014). The book showcases Professor Kamm’s articles on bioethics as parts of a coherent whole, with sections devoted to death and dying; early life (on conception and use of embryos, abortion, and childhood); genetics and other enhancements (on cloning and other genetic technologies); allocating scarce resources; and methodology (on the relation of moral theory and practical ethics).

Panelists include:

  • Frances Kamm, Littauer Professor of Philosophy & Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government; Professor of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Harvard University; Former Senior Fellow, Petrie-Flom Center
  • Norman Daniels, Mary B. Saltonstall Professor of Population Ethics and Professor of Ethics and Population Health, Harvard School of Public Health
  • Thomas (Tim) Scanlon, Jr., Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Harvard University
  • Moderator: Christopher T. Robertson, Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Associate Professor, James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona

This event is free and open to the public. For questions, please contact petrie-flom@law.harvard.edu or 617-496-4662.

Sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics; Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University; and the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard Medical School; with support from the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund.

Prioritizing Parks and Patients

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By Nathaniel Counts

During the government shutdown in October 2013, a battle in part over the future of healthcare reform, a non-negligible amount of media attention focused on the shutdown of public parks.  Perhaps because the parks were the least expected casualty of the shutdown, or the most ludicrous – many are, after all, large outdoor spaces that functioned for millions of years before there were federal funds for them – Americans were frustrated or amused that they could not walk around outside some places because politicians in D.C. could not agree on a budget.

The healthcare reform debate pitted those who believed that everyone should have health insurance or that access to healthcare was a right against those who believed that health spending was already too high or that everyone does not have a right to access to healthcare.  In a world of infinite resources, where everyone could have complete access to healthcare without anyone having to give up anything of their own, it is difficult to imagine that anyone would say that there should not be universal access to healthcare, that some are not deserving of the service.  It would be strange to require a threshold public showing of effort to obtain health insurance through employment if there was no cost to giving the healthcare – if fairness is an issue, as it appears to be a concern for some, there are certainly other services that could be denied.  It is likely that for most the fairness concern only becomes salient in the face of resource constraints where these same funds could fund other programs or allow others to pursue their interests.

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Video now available of panel on “Reproductive Rights around the Globe”

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Video of the panel discussion “Reproductive Rights around the Globe,” held at Harvard Law School on November 7, is now available via the Petrie-Flom Center’s website. The panel — cosponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center; the Human Rights Program; and the Child Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School; and the Harvard Global Health Institute — included legal experts on a variety of topics:

  • International trends in gamete donor identifiability v. anonymity – I. Glenn Cohen, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Faculty co-Director, Petrie-Flom Center
  • The politics of evidence and expertise in domestic and international abortion litigation – Aziza Ahmed, Associate Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law; Visiting Scholar, Petrie-Flom Center (Spring 2014)
  • Use of international fora, including courts and treaty bodies, to advance reproductive rights – Mindy Jane Roseman, Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School; Academic Director, Human Rights Program
Link to the video here.

Caplan on Organs and Inmates

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By Art Caplan

Are we ever capable of laying a stupid idea to rest in America?  Apparently not.  The latest tempest in the ever-resurrecting world of solutions to the shortage of organs is donation by executed prisoners.  The Governor of Ohio held up a plan to execute a man on death row when he requested that his organs be donated to his mother and sister each of whom have serious health problems.

According to the AP,

“Ohio Governor John Kasich on Wednesday stayed the execution of convicted killer Ronald Phillips to assess whether Phillips’s non-vital organs or tissues can be donated to his mother or possibly others. Phillips, 40, was scheduled to be executed Thursday for the 1993 murder of 3-year-old Sheila Marie Evans.

“I realize this is a bit of uncharted territory for Ohio, but if another life can be saved by his willingness to donate his organs and tissues, then we should allow for that to happen,” Kasich said in a statement.”

The Governor need not have bothered.  What child rapist and murderer Ron Phillips had in mind was donating his heart and kidneys to his family.  He has shown no interest in helping anyone else nor did he ever mention tissue donation.

Moreover, getting organs from an executed prisoner is both impractical and immoral.

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A disenfranchising effect of the right to health?

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By Julian Urrutia

Human rights embody the humanist egalitarian principle that all human beings are morally important, and that they are morally important simply because of their humanity. Princes and paupers, bankers and bums, women and men . . . we’re all subjects of human rights that are not contingent on anything other than our humanity.

There is widespread agreement that the rise of humanism is one of the most important milestones in the history of moral progress. However, it also clear that the rise of humanism did not, by itself, bring us all the way down the path of progress to where we are today: throughout colonial history, for example, humanism failed to deliver us from outrageous discrimination when the boundaries of humanity were delineated too narrowly.

Humanists are just as prone to inhumane conduct when they fail to recognize other’s humanity. When we determine what is human (and must therefore be treated with respect), we tacitly also determine what is un-human (and can therefore be exploited). As Carl Schmitt put it “Given the coherence of this two-sided aspect of humanity, it should be remembered that Bacon opposed the axiom homo homini deus to that of homo homini lupus.” (The nomos of the earth, 1950)

That’s why contemporary, liberal constitutions that recognize human rights are so great. All people are recognized as being equally human, and therefore equally subjects of human rights. This is certainly a form of moral progress. However, narrow human rights-based approaches to politics, legislation and policy-making can have similarly perverse consequences as narrow forms of humanism. Instead of delivering us from outrageous discrimination, marginalization and exploitation, a narrow focus on rights might confine us to them. For example, there is growing evidence that human-rights-based legislation and litigation often fails to achieve an effective enjoyment of the right to health to among those who need it most. Even more troubling is the possibility that, sometimes, rights-based approaches not only have little positive effects, but might in fact lead to further marginalization and disenfranchising of the poor.

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