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By Steven H. Miles, MD The essence of the scandal at the US American Psychological Association (APA) is quite simple. The US Department of Defense (DOD) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) forged a secret partnership with APA leaders to create a policy that was designed to authorize and protect psychologists who designed and managed/oversaw interrogation by torture. The APA and DOD agreed that psychologists worked for military intelligence rather than…

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By Antonia Chan The High Court of Kenya has begun reviewing two important cases on the human rights of people living with HIV. The first concerns the forced or coerced sterilization of HIV-positive women; the second challenges a directive from Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta to list the names of HIV-positive individuals, including children. KELIN, an NGO that promotes and advocates for HIV-related human rights in Eastern Africa, has helped spearhead…

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Fulfilling Social and Economic Rights Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Terra Lawson-Remer, and Susan Randolph Oxford University Press, 2015 ISBN 978-0-19-973551-8 272 pages $26.89 By Health and Human Rights Journal intern Antonia Chan Published July 13, 2015 Fulfilling Social and Economic Rights addresses a question critical to health and human rights: how can we develop a better framework for evaluating societal progress, given that overall improvements in wealth and technological attainment often mask…

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Reproductive Health and Human Rights: The Way Forward Laura Reichenbach and Mindy Jane Roseman University of Pennsylvania Press 2009 ISBN 978-0-8122-2160-2 277 pages $69.95 By Health and Human Rights Journal intern Antonia Chan Published July 9, 2015 Reproductive Health and Human Rights: The Way Forward provides an in-depth, multifaceted analysis of reproductive rights through a series of critical essays by leading scholars and practitioners. Collectively, they explain how the 1994…

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By Alison Blaiklock Health and humanitarian workers in Australia’s immigration detention centers now face imprisonment under Australia’s Border Force Act for talking about human rights abuses that they observe in detention centers. The Act, which came into force on July 1, forbids contracted workers in any detention center from revealing information about conditions they observe—even the absence of basic sanitation or inadequate responses to child abuse. Workers who speak out…

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By Antonia Chan  The weapons industry is proverbially up in arms over Pope Francis’s recent declaration that weapons manufacturers—and their investors —are hypocrites if they call themselves Christian. At a rally in Turin, Italy, he noted that “people, managers, businessmen who call themselves Christian” and manufacture weapons lead to “a bit of distrust.” The pope then expanded his criticism to investors in the weapons industry, claiming that “duplicity is the…

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Routledge Handbook of Global Public Health in Asia Siân M. Griffiths, Jin Ling Tang, Eng Kiong Yeoh, Editors Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014 ISBN 978-0-4156-4382-5 786 pages $225 By Kai Chen The Routledge Handbook of Global Public Health in Asia examines public health policies in Asia and analyzes the challenges facing health systems in different Asian contexts. The editors argue that neither pure public nor pure private arrangements are adequately developing…

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By Antonia Chan Public health officials from California’s San Diego and Imperial counties have signed a deal with the Mexican state of Baja California, as well as the nonprofits International Community Foundation and Puentes de Esperanza Contra Tuberculosis, formalizing a joint effort to combat TB along the border. The Times of San Diego reports that “participants will receive referrals, lend technical support, accept lab specimens, and assist with investigations.” The…

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