A broad-ranging, insightful analysis of the complex practical and ethical issues involved in global health.
Guardian columnist Wolff (Philosophy/University College London; Ethics and Public Policy, 2011 etc.) poses a challenging but essential question: “How can there be a human right to health if the resources are just not there to satisfy it?”
Before addressing the current global health crisis, the author looks back at Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 speech in which he asserted that the “four freedoms”—freedom of speech and worship, and freedom from fear and want—are basic human rights. In 1945, the first UN Charter included provisions for human rights, in 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was passed and during the same period the World Health Organization came into existence. The protection of human rights became international law in 1976. This is the context for the definition of “right to health” as a human right protected under international law, although its implications are still under debate. Does it include free access to condoms and abortion, or the right of developing nations to produce affordable pharmaceuticals in violation of patents? Wolff uses the HIV/AIDS epidemic as a case study—from its discovery in 1981 to the fight over funding to support research and guarantee that sufferers have access to treatment. He writes about how international efforts to deal with the spread of AIDS to Haiti and Africa were derailed by a “catastrophic” change in World Bank policies in the 1980s, when the Bank, and the IMF, insisted that developing countries seeking aid cut back public-sector expenditures. Just as these constraints were being reversed, the World Trade Organization demanded that members cease violating patents by producing low-cost generic pharmaceuticals. While the author describes the struggle to establish the right to universal health as a work in progress, he is cautiously optimistic.
A broad-ranging, insightful analysis of the complex practical and ethical issues involved in global health.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-393-06335-6
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
Remarkable bravery fluently recounted.
The ably reconstructed story of the author’s convoluted escape from North Korea, detailing the hardships of life there and the serendipity of flight.
A supremely determined young woman, Lee chronicles her life in North Korea and her defection in her late teens in 1998. With the assistance of co-author John, she re-creates a picaresque tale of incredible, suspenseful, and truly death-defying adventures, which eventually led her to asylum in South Korea and then America. The author grew up largely in the northeast province of Ryanggang, bordering the Yalu River with China, and her family home was in Hyesan. Her father was a privileged member of the military, and her enterprising mother was a successful trader on the black market. The family, including younger brother Min-ho, did not endure the hardships of famine like people of low songbun, or caste, but the author learned that her father was not her biological father only shortly before he died by suicide after being trailed by security, beaten, and imprisoned in her mid-teens. Her mother had previously married and divorced another man. At age 17, the lights of China, directly across the river, beckoned, and the author managed to cross and establish contact first with a trading partner of her mother’s, then dissident relatives of her father’s in Shenyang. While the author had no intention of leaving her mother, it was apparent that it was too dangerous for her to return. Her relatives shielded her for a few years, trying to arrange a marriage with a wealthy Korean-Chinese man, from whom the author fled at the eleventh hour. Working as a waitress in Shanghai afforded some invisibility, though she was always susceptible to con men and security police. As the narrative progresses, the author’s trials grow ever more astounding, especially as she eventually tried to get her mother and brother out of North Korea.
Remarkable bravery fluently recounted.Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-00-755483-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper360
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
A sharp, compelling, and impassioned book.
A London-based journalist offers her perspective on race in Britain in the early 21st century.
In 2014, Eddo-Lodge published a blog post that proclaimed she was “no longer engaging with white people on the topic of race.” After its viral reception, she realized that her mission should be to do the opposite, so she actively began articulating, rather than suppressing, her feelings about racism. In the first chapter, the author traces her awakening to the reality of a brutal British colonial history and the ways that history continues to impact race relations in the present, especially between blacks and the police. Eddo-Lodge analyzes the system that has worked against blacks and kept them subjugated to laws that work against—rather than for—them. She argues that it is not enough to deconstruct racist structures. White people must also actively see race itself by constantly asking “who benefits from their race and who is disproportionately impacted by negative stereotypes.” They must also understand the extent of the privileges granted them because of their race and work through racist fears that, as British arch-conservative Enoch Powell once said, “the black man will [one day] have the whip hand over the white man.” Eddo-Lodge then explores the fraught question of being a black—and therefore, according to racist stereotype—“angry” female and the ways her “assertiveness, passion and excitement” have been used against her. In examining the relationship between race and class, the author further notes the way British politicians have used the term “white” to qualify working class. By leaving out reference to other members of that class, they “compound the currency-like power of whiteness.” In her probing and personal narrative, Eddo-Lodge offers fresh insight into the way all racism is ultimately a “white problem” that must be addressed by commitment to action, no matter how small. As she writes, in the end, “there's no justice, there's just us.”
A sharp, compelling, and impassioned book.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4088-7055-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
