Law Commons^™

The "People's Total War On Covid-19": Urban Pandemic Management Through (Non-)Law In Wuhan, China, Philipp Renninger

Washington International Law Journal

Although COVID-19 was first detected in the People’s Republic of China, the pandemic now appears contained there. Western and Chinese media attribute this apparent success to the central level of the Chinese state and the Communist Party. However, this article reveals that local entities provided critical contributions to China’s COVID-19 management, particularly in the pandemic’s first epicenter: Wuhan city in Hubei province. Chinese cities like Wuhan can fight public health emergencies through legal and nonlegal instruments. Although Wuhan had prepared for possible pandemics, its existing plans, institutions, and warning systems initially failed against COVID-19. The city did not contain the …

Reforming And Strengthening The Centers For Disease Control And Prevention: Five Key Reforms To Renew The Agency’S Stature And Effectiveness, Lawrence O. Gostin, Sandro Galea

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the world’s leading public health agency, so admired that whole regions and countries have borrowed its name—in Africa, Europe, even China. In past epidemics, CDC’s expertise was transformative, such as in AIDS, Ebola, Zika, and Influenza H1N1. If there ever were a moment for the CDC to show leadership domestically and globally, it was the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, the CDC’s stature was diminished—not enhanced—in an administration that not only eschewed science and politically pressured the CDC, but also gave notice of withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), where CDC …

Tuberculosis, Human Rights, And Law Reform: Addressing The Lack Of Progress In The Global Tuberculosis Response, Matthew M. Kavanagh, Lawrence O. Gostin, John Stephens

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In 2018, the United Nations General Assembly convened the first-ever high-level meeting (HLM) on tuberculosis (TB). Since that time news on the world’s most lethal infectious disease is not good—the 2019 WHO TB report shows 1.2 million people died from TB, a number that has fallen just 11% since 2015, less than one-third of the way towards the End TB Strategy milestone of a 35% reduction (to about 850 million deaths) by 2020. The same number of people, 10.0 million, are estimated to have fallen ill with TB in 2018 as in 2017. The stubborn persistence of TB is attributable …

Health Priorities For Sustainable Development, Lisa E. Sachs, Jeffrey D. Sachs

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The right to health has been repeatedly recognized as one of the core human rights, essential for human functioning, human dignity, economic well-being and development. But the right to health continues to elude hundreds of millions and with Covid-19, perhaps billions of people. Poverty remains the most critical obstacle to the realization of the right to health in developing countries. Achieving universal health coverage, before the additional costs of Covid-19, would require roughly $50 billion per year, approximately 0.1 percent of the GDP of the high-income OECD countries. Yet despite this broad understanding of the vicious cycle of poverty and …

The Shibboleth Of Human Rights In Public Health, Lawrence O. Gostin, Tamira Daniely, Hanna E. Huffstetler, Caitlin R. Williams, Benjamin Mason Meier

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Human rights discourse has greatly influenced advocacy for justice in public health. Yet, beyond rhetorical claims, how can we employ human rights to achieve the aspiration of health with justice? Without human rights education to support public health practice, human rights have become a shibboleth of public health—raised frequently to signal devotion to justice, but employed rarely in policy, programming, or practice. As advocates respond to the public health injustices of populist nationalism during an unprecedented pandemic, human rights education must be an essential foundation to hold governments accountable for implementing rights to safeguard public health.

Genome Editing 2020: Ethics And Human Rights In Germline Editing In Humans And Gene Drives In Mosquitoes, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The moon landing, now more than a half century in the past, has turned out to be the culmination of human space travel, rather than its beginning. Genetic engineering, especially applications of CRISPR, now presents the most publicly discussed engineering challenges—and not just technical, but ethical as well. In this article, I will use the two most controversial genomic engineering applications to help identify the ethics and human rights implications of these research projects. Each of these techniques directly modifies the mechanisms of evolution, threatens to alter our views of ourselves as humans and our planet as our home, and …

Proceeding Without Consent: The Ethics Of Disregarding Patient Preference For Paternalistic Reasons, Nicholas Munsey

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Within the last few decades, modern medical regulations have brought the practicing medical community to an unprecedented level of accountability. Laws and regulations governing the practice of medicine were once, at best, loosely enforced guidelines; practices such as experimental surgeries, dangerous health testing, end of life care, and treatment of mental illness were left comparatively unregulated. The introduction of patient rights and new standards for practicing have left the medical community with a novel dilemma: how might one approach a patient who, according to medical advice, is in need of treatment if that patient is unable to express preference or …

The Right To Health In Immigration Detention During The Covid-19 Pandemic: An Examination Of Federal And International Law, Alaina Dye

Center for Health Law Policy and Bioethics

This article examines the United States’ response to the severe impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in immigration detention centers and considers the United States’ obligations to the vulnerable population of immigrant detainees. This article argues that the COVID-19 pandemic further demonstrates the United States’ lack of guaranteed health care for immigrant detainees and deportees despite international recognition of the human rights to health and life. The United States violates international law when immigrant detainees’ human rights are disregarded by lack of appropriate access to health care during a global pandemic. This article recognizes that discrimination against immigrants under the Trump …

Redefining Lgbtq And Abortion Rights In Latin America: A Transnational Toolkit, Alyssa Julian

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Throughout Latin America, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer (LGBTQ) and abortion rights movements have progressed at divergent strengths and speeds, with significant variation among countries. The region is home to some of the most restrictive and discriminatory laws when it comes to these contentious issues. This Note explores some of the reasons behind the variation in LGBTQ and abortion rights throughout the region.

This Note traces the economic and political history of Latin America to illustrate the climate in which these social movements are operating. Further, this Note offers a brief snapshot of recent global developments in LGBTQ …

Reproducing Dignity: Race, Disability, And Reproductive Controls, Mary Crossley

Articles

Human rights treaties and American constitutional law recognize decisions about reproduction as central to human dignity. Historically and today, Black women and women with disabilities have endured numerous impairments of their freedom to form and maintain families. Other scholars have examined these barriers to motherhood. Unexplored, however, are parallels among the experiences of women in these two groups or the women for whom Blackness and disability are overlapping identities. This Article fills that void. The disturbing legacy of the Eugenics movement is manifest in many settings. Black and disabled women undergo sterilizations at disproportionately high rates. Public benefit programs discourage …

Introduction: Global Health And Human Rights, Lawrence O. Gostin, Benjamin Mason Meier

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This introduction highlights the foundational importance of human rights for global health and provides an academic framework for this book by laying out the role of human rights under international law as a basis for public health. Part I seeks to define the evolving conceptualization of health, examining both the shifting focus from medicine to public health and the shifting response from international health to global health. Framing global health as a human rights imperative, Part II examines the establishment of human rights under international law, the implementation of these rights in public policy, and the development of rights for …