Neo-Liberal Legal Morality and Access to Medicine

An earlier form of this article appeared as Omar Swartz, ‘Law and Access to AIDS Medicine: Critical Thoughts’ (2000) 5 Holy Cross Journal of Law and Public Policy 63–85. An expanded version of this paper will appear in Swartz Omar , The Rule of Law, Property, and the Violation of Human Rights: A Plea For Social Justice, ch 5 (in press).

National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention, <www.cdc.gov/hiv/stats.htm#international> at 30 July 2004.

Wasserman Stephanie , HIV/AIDS: Facts to Consider, 1999 (Washington, DC: National Conference of State Legislatures, 1999) 12.

‘FDA Approves New AIDS Drug’,' Associated Press, 16 March 2003, <http://edition.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/conditions/03/14/aids.drug/> at 11 August 2004. For a first person narrative on how the AIDS epidemic has ‘turned’ since 1996 for a certain small segment of the US population, see Stanford David , ‘Back to the Future: One's AIDS Tale Shows How Quickly Epidemic Has Turned’ (8 November 1996) The Wall Street Journal A12. The irony here, of course, is that in the US, the overall social structure is not being threatened by the AIDS epidemic as it is in other countries.

Quoted in Badley Ken , Worldviews: The Challenge of Choice (1996) 210.

Hadler Nortin M , ‘Laboring for Longevity’ (1999) 41 Journal of Occupation and Environmental Medicine 617. Hadler also argues that disaffection is also lethal, and that ‘the less advantaged must have access to jobs that promise to sustain their self-respect’, 618.

Quoted in Heywood Mark Cornell Morna , ‘Human Rights and AIDS in South Africa: From Right Margin to Left Margin’ (1998) 2 Health and Human Rights 77.

Ibid.

‘Appropriate Collaboration Between Industry and Government in the Development of an AIDS Vaccine’ (1989) 17 Law, Medicine, and Health Care 131.

Ibid.

Ibid 135.

Yania v Bigan 155 A.2d 343 (1959).

Ibid 346.

In the determination of a duty, the law has made a distinction between action and inaction or between ‘misfeasance’ and ‘nonfeasance.’ Liability for misfeasance may extend to any person to whom harm may reasonably be foreseeable as a result of another's conduct. Liability for nonfeasance, on the other hand, requires some definite relationship between the parties so that social policy justifies the imposition of a duty to act.

Prosser and Keeton on Torts (5th ed, 1984) 375.

Ibid.

‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ (1968) 162 Science 1244.

Ibid.

‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ above n 17, 1244.

My information for this program comes from the website of the New York-based Covenant House, an independent NGO dedicated to the rehabilitation and defense of street children in South and Central America from a 17 December 2002 story in the Digital Freedom Network. See <www.covenanthouse.org/about_pc_la20021217_digital_freedom_netw.html> at 30 July 2004.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

See Platt Anthony M , ‘The Politics of Law and Order’ (1994) 21 Social Justice 3–13 (discussing the privatisation of justice and security and the boom industry of prison construction).

‘Human Rights And Aids: The Future of the Pandemic’ (1996) 30 The John Marshall Law Review 201.

‘Burma and Cambodia: Human Rights, Social Disruption and the Spread of HIV/AIDS, (1998) 2 Health and Human Rights 85.

‘Human Rights and AIDS, above n 25, 203.