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Ethics of Using Male Circumcision for HIV Prevention

December 20, 2016

Three recent randomized, controlled trials in Africa indicate that male circumcision significantly reduces the risk of men acquiring HIV from HIV-positive women via sexual intercourse. These promising new findings have added fuel to already volatile debates about the ethics of male circumcision. In this paper, we seek to briefly identify and evaluate some key ethical … Read more

Do the Ravages of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic Ethically Justify Mandatory HIV Testing?

December 20, 2016

In his ‘Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV in Botswana: an Ethical Perspective on Mandatory Testing’, Peter Clark controversially defends compulsory testing – and even compulsory treatment– of pregnant mothers in an African country with one of the world’s highest HIV prevalence rates. He argues, on consequentialist grounds, that the urgency of the epidemic in Botswana requires … Read more

Community Attitudes Toward Rationing ARVs

December 20, 2016

Medical rationing of anti-retroviral therapies (ARVs) may conflict with the right to health, but rationing is nevertheless a reality in developing countries. In this article, which is based on a poster presentation at the conference, Stuart Rennie presents the preliminary findings of a study on community attitudes towards rationing ARVs in the Democratic Republic of … Read more

HIV Testing and Individual Rights

December 20, 2016

In their Policy Forum “HIV testing in China”, Z. Wu et al. describe the new Chinese national program of active, provider-initiated HIV/AIDS testing among prisoners and other high-risk groups. For some groups, such as prisoners and government workers, individuals consent to health examinations that include an HIV test, rather than directly consenting to the test … Read more

AIDS Care and Treatment in Sub-Saharan Africa

December 20, 2016

With the advent of new AIDS treatment initiatives such as the World Health Organization’s “3 by 5” program and the United States’ “President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,” the ethical questions about AIDS care in the developing world have changed. No longer are they fundamentally about the conduct of research; now, we must turn our … Read more

Is It Ethical to Study What Ought Not to Happen?

December 20, 2016

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, only an estimated 2% of all AIDS patients have access to treatment. As AIDS treatment access is scaled-up in the coming years, difficult rationing decisions will have to be made concerning who will come to gain access to this scarce medical resource. This article focuses on the position, expressed … Read more

Demographic and Health Surveillance

December 20, 2016

Longitudinal data gathered from health surveillance, when combined with detailed demographic information, can provide invaluable insight into disease outcomes. Many such surveillance sites exist in the developing world, particularly in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and focus on diseases such as HIV/AIDS, cholera, malaria and tuberculosis. The indistinct positions of such surveillance systems, often inhabiting an … Read more

Desperately Seeking Targets

December 20, 2016

The human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) pandemic, and responses to it, have exposed clear political, social and economic inequities between and within nations. The most striking manifestations of this inequity is access to AIDS treatment. In affluent nations, antiretroviral treatment is becoming the standard of care for those with AIDS, while the same … Read more

Is There a Place for Benevolent Deception?

December 20, 2016

In ‘Ethical jurisdictions in bioethical research’, J.M. Mfutso-Bengu and T. Taylor describe a conflict between a host ethics committee in Malawi and a remote ethical committee in USA, concerning the wording of a consent form. The study in question involved the removal of the eyes of children who had died of malaria in order to … Read more

Elegant Variations

December 20, 2016

Richard Rorty constructs a vision of the ideal citizen and the ideal society on the basis of three basic concepts: ethnocentrism, liberalism, and irony. This article critically examines his understanding of these three concepts and how he interrelates them. I will argue that Rorty’s political philosophy is lacking in internal coherence due to the strong … Read more