Parental rights, child welfare, and public health: the case of PKU screening.
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Epidemiologic studies involving HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) antibody testing create ethical dilemmas, particularly about notifying asymptomatic seropositive subjects. Four study designs address this problem: mandatory notification, optional notification, anonymous testing, and blind testing. No single design consistently optimizes the trade-off between valid and ethical research. Each strategy differs substantially from the others in its effect on response rates, bias, ability to perform longitudinal studies, numbers of subjects who learn their test results, and the number of subjects counseled about HIV risk reduction. Both local institutional review boards and potential subjects of study (and their sexual partners) should participate in decisions regarding the conduct of sensitive AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) research.
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For the near term, control of the AIDS epidemic depends entirely upon altering the human behavior which results in HIV transmission. How best to achieve the required changes has been controversial with approaches ranging from education/information only, to a vast array of largely unproven voluntary behavior modification techniques, to mandatory testing and restrictive measures. Given the complexity of human behavior and the reality of a still uncontrolled epidemic, at least among poor urban drug using minorities, there is a legitimate role for most approaches and any promising behavior modification strategy deserves evaluation. However, because voluntarism will not work for some individuals, society still must choose between effective public health law--including restrictive measures--now, and a much larger reservoir of HIV infection and more deaths from AIDS for many generations to come.
We surveyed a random sample of South Carolina physicians and infection control practitioners about the reporting of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) cases. Of physicians surveyed, 79% indicated that HIV infection as well as AIDS should be reported by name. The following characteristics were associated with those physicians who do not report AIDS cases: not feeling responsible for reporting, not reporting a case perceived to have been reported in another state, believing that information required for reporting is not on the chart, and residing in an urban setting. Targeted education can address these underreporting factors.
Like most reform proposals, President Clinton's proposed Health Security Act offers universal access to care but does not significantly alter the nature of patients' legal rights to services. The act would create a system of delegated federal regulation in which the states would act like federal administrative agencies to carry out reform. To achieve uniform, universal coverage, the act would establish a form of mandatory health insurance, with federal law controlling the minimum services to which everyone would be entitled. Because there is no constitutionally protected right to health care and no independent constitutional standard for judging what insurance benefits are appropriate, the federal government would retain considerable freedom to decide what services would and would not be covered. If specific benefits are necessary for patients, they will have to be stated in the legislation that produces reform.
President Clinton's Health Security Act entitles individuals not to unlimited health care, but to a package of defined insurance benefits with specific exclusions and limitations. Like virtually all reform proposals, it would limit covered benefits to services that are medically necessary. If health reform is to control costs, not all medically necessary care can be covered. In the absence of a generally accepted definition of medical necessity, many services will not be guaranteed to all patients unless they are explicitly covered in the federal legislation or regulations. Without a federal definition of medical necessity or regulations listing covered services, health insurance plans will retain the primary authority to decide what is medically necessary for their patient subscribers.
Partner notification has emerged as an important strategy in the fight against acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), and states have now adopted a plethora of laws that encourage or mandate notification, often without the patient's consent. As human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection continues to spread among women, the future development of AIDS control strategies and public health laws must be shaped by concern for the safety and autonomy of patients who face a risk of domestic violence. Three distinct recommendations flow from this premise. First, all HIV-infected women should be assessed for the risk of domestic violence and offered appropriate interventions. Second, where a risk of abuse is indicated, partners should never be notified without the patient's consent. State laws that presently permit involuntary notification should be repealed or amended. Third, laws that punish a patient's refusal to notify partners should also be modified or repealed.
Supporters of eugenics, the powerful early 20th-century movement for improving human heredity, often attacked that era's dramatic improvements in public health and medicine for preserving the lives of people they considered hereditarily unfit. Eugenics and public health also battled over whether heredity played a significant role in infectious diseases. However, American public health and eugenics had much in common as well. Eugenic methods often were modeled on the infection control techniques of public health. The goals, values, and concepts of disease of these two movements also often overlapped. This paper sketches some of the key similarities and differences between eugenics and public health in the United States, and it examines how their relationship was shaped by the interaction of science and culture. The results demonstrate that eugenics was not an isolated movement whose significance is confined to the histories of genetics and pseudoscience, but was instead an important and cautionary part of past public health and a general medical history as well.
OBJECTIVES: In 2 successive decades since 1967, legal accommodation of abortion has grown in many countries. The objective of this study was to assess whether liberalizing trends have been maintained in the last decade and whether increased protection of women's human rights has influenced legal reform. METHODS: A worldwide review was conducted of legislation and judicial rulings affecting abortion, and legal reforms were measured against governmental commitments made under international human rights treaties and at United Nations conferences. RESULTS: Since 1987, 26 jurisdictions have extended grounds for lawful abortion, and 4 countries have restricted grounds. Additional limits on access to legal abortion services include restrictions on funding of services, mandatory counseling and reflection delay requirements, third-party authorizations, and blockades of abortion clinics. CONCLUSIONS: Progressive liberalization has moved abortion laws from a focus on punishment toward concern with women's health and welfare and with their human rights. However, widespread maternal mortality and morbidity show that reform must be accompanied by accessible abortion services and improved contraceptive care and information.
OBJECTIVES: This study sought to describe the evolution of the Russian compulsory health insurance system and to identify factors associated with noncoverage. METHODS: Data from successive waves of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (1992-2000) were analyzed. RESULTS: Insurance coverage grew rapidly throughout the 1990s, although 11.8% of the country's citizens were still uninsured by 2000. Coverage initiation rates were greater at first among citizens who were better off, but this gap closed over the study period. Among individuals of working age, coverage rates diminished with age and were lower for the unemployed, for the self-employed, and for those residing outside Moscow or St. Petersburg. CONCLUSIONS: The growth of insurance coverage in Russia slowed toward the end of the 1990s, and gaps remain. Achievement of universal coverage will require new, targeted policies.
Public-health measures are very effective and efficient means of improving health, yet public health is either neglected by the literature or fraught with unease, mainly due to the combination of the aggregate-distributive tension with the element of compulsion. I argue that this unease can be decreased by 1) a pluralist-holistic view of health, situating the normative value of health in its effect on well-being, incorporating both the objective and subjective source of the value of health; and 2) by a rich concept of reciprocity. This article supports Martha Nussbaum's critique of social-contract thinking for placing too much weight on the scale of normal functioning and productive reciprocity, as well as Sen's distinction between well-being and agency freedom. To reach an adequate understanding of the value and goal of public health within the general setting of health care, a pluralist conception of health, well-being and reciprocity is necessary.
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The development of health and family planning services in Bangladesh is examined in the context of the country's political economy. Inequities of power, influence, opportunity, and the ownership and distribution of assets and income are seen to lie at the root of the "Bangladesh crisis." In this, the country is not unlike many others in the Third World, only more so. The internal and external pressures which have contributed to a coercive attitude toward the problem of too rapid population growth are discussed. The allocation of Bangladeshi health service resources is examined in terms of expenditure, manpower, and facilities; they are found to be both inequitably distributed and inefficiently applied. Some alternatives to present patterns of development are touched upon. It is concluded that despite the country's poverty, most people do not have to go without basic primary health care (including family planning), which can be afforded even by countries as economically impoverished as Bangladesh.