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This report provides concrete evidence of continuing obstacles to access to remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuses, based on five well-documented cases. It also sets out seven areas for practical reform, arguing that the UN negotiations for a binding treaty on business and human rights offers a clear opportunity to improve the situation for victims going forward.
Typically anorexia nervosa is diagnosed as a condition of teenage girls where the rates of mortality and morbidity are very high and recovery rates very low. This chapter discusses the condition as experienced in Australia by older women who have either lived with anorexia during adolescence and as young women or who have been diagnosed later in life. The discussion traverses issues of consent to treatment or its refusal, capacity to provide consent, and the application of human right protections arising from various human rights instruments.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 was granted Royal Assent in the UK on 18 November 2008. This article will look at two specific areas addressed in the new Act and ask what the human rights issues were under the old law and whether the changes adequately address these issues. By looking at case law under the European Convention on Human Rights, the article will attempt to evaluate whether either the old law or the new law can be considered compatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The NHS Constitution was published on 21 January 2009. It was one of a number of recommendations in Lord Darzi’s report ‘High Quality Care for All’ which was published on the 60th anniversary of the NHS and set out a ten-year plan to provide the highest quality of care and service for patients in England. The NHS belongs to us all. The NHS Constitution brings together in one place for the first time in the history of the NHS, what staff, patients and public can expect from the NHS. As well as capturing the purpose, principles and values of the NHS, the Constitution brings together a number of rights, pledges and responsibilities for staff and patients alike. These rights and responsibilities are the result of extensive discussions and consultations with staff, patients and public and it reflects what matters to them.
The Handbook to the NHS Constitution is here to give NHS staff and patients all the information you need about the NHS Constitution in one place. It acts as a guide to: - patients’ rights and pledges - responsibilities of patients and the public and staff - staff rights and NHS pledges to its staff At the back of this Handbook is an appendix, which outlines the legal source for both the patient and staff rights in the NHS Constitution.
Debbie Purdy, who wants her husband to accompany her to Switzerland for an assisted suicide without fear of prosecution, took her case to the United Kingdom’s highest court, the House of Lords, for a final appeal this week. Ms Purdy, who has progressive multiple sclerosis, scored an important victory on the first day of the two day hearing, when the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, conceded that article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to respect for private life, applies to cases like hers.
Predictive testing for Huntington’s disease was introduced in the late 1980s. It was offered reluctantly, however, because of the lack of treatment available for identified gene carriers and the potential for genetic discrimination—that is, the unfair and inappropriate treatment of a person or group on the basis of genetic information. In the linked cross sectional survey (doi:10.1136/bmj.b2175), Bombard and colleagues assess the nature and prevalence of genetic discrimination in a cohort of asymptomatic genetically tested and untested people at risk for Huntington’s disease.
In September 2008, the European Court of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECtHR) upheld a breach of Article 13 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), in that the UK failed to provide RK and AK with an effective legal remedy for the removal of their child from their care as a result of medical misdiagnosis. The case throws into focus the approach the domestic UK courts have on the rights of third parties, in particular, the rights of parents where their children are subjected to negligent medical treatment.
In Tysiac v. Poland (2007) the Strasbourg Court ruled in favour of the applicant (who had been denied access to a lawful therapeutic abortion), finding that Poland had failed to comply with its positive obligations to safeguard the applicant's right to effective respect for her private life under Article 8. Exploring this controversial judgment, the author assesses the claim that Tysiac marks a 'radical shift' on the part of the Court in creating a 'right to abortion'. The author argues that while Tysiac makes an important addition to abortion jurisprudence, the notion it founds such a 'right' greatly overstates the legal significance of this case.
A lesbian couple has won a landmark case against a Californian clinic, where doctors allegedly cited their religious beliefs as grounds to refuse the couple IVF (in vitro fertilisation) treatment. Guadalupe Benitez, 36, of Oceanside, and her spouse, Joanne Clark, sued doctors Douglas Fenton and Christine Brody, at North Coast Women's Medical Group in Vista for discrimination in 2001. The doctors treated Ms Benitez with fertility drugs and provided her guidance about self-insemination but allegedly told her they would not inseminate her, due to their religious objections. The couple was, however, referred to another clinic by the North Coast doctors, which they were told would have no moral objections. Ms Benitez underwent treatment and the couple have since had three children. The discrimination case was finally settled after eight years for undisclosed sum of money.
Most law school courses approach reproductive rights law from a purely domestic perspective, as an extensive survey of casebooks and course material reveals. The authors argue that a transnational perspective can enhance the teaching of sexual and reproductive health in all of the law school courses and doctrinal settings in which this topic in treated. While the topic of “Global Sexual and Reproductive Rights” can be presented in a free-standing course, transnational perspectives should also be integrated across the curriculum where sexual and reproductive rights are discussed. Expanding reproductive rights pedagogy to address transnational perspectives will aid in exposing a wide range of students to transnational material, will expand students’ preparedness to analyze such materials, and will better reflect the debates on sexual and reproductive health currently taking place outside of law school classrooms.
Despite appearances in public debate, there is a surprising amount of consensus across the political spectrum on two basic components of reproductive rights: the O.S.I. (the offspring selection interest) and the B.I.I. (the bodily integrity interest). In this article, Colb suggests that it is important to keep these two often-overlapping interests distinct in thinking about calls for reproductive rights. To illustrate the pitfalls of conflating the O.S.I. and the B.I.I., Colb takes up frozen embryo disputes between sperm and egg donors and intra-couple conflicts about abortion. She concludes that although opponents on the abortion issue are unlikely to reach a consensus, the scope of their disagreements can be narrowed and better defined by treating the O.S.I. and the B.I.I. as the independent and severable interests that they truly are.
The Supreme Court in Montana has ruled that nothing in the state's law prevents patients from seeking medical assistance to commit suicide. The ruling paves the way for Montana to become the third US state alongside Washington and Oregon to allow patients to seek the procedure. The decision comes a year after a lower court ruled it constitutional. Doctors will now be able to prescribe the necessary drugs to the terminally ill without fear of prosecution. The state's Supreme Court said there was nothing in its precedent showing that doctor-assisted suicide was against public policy. However, it did not go as far the district court, which ruled last year that the right of terminally-ill patients to ask their doctors to help them die was protected by the state's constitution.
The House of Lords in Purdy forced the DPP to issue offence-specific guidance on assisted suicide, but Jacqueline A Laing argues that the resulting interim policy adopted last September is unconstitutional, discriminatory and illegal. In July 2009, the law lords in R (on the application of Purdy) v Director of Public Prosecutions [2009] All ER (D) 335 required that the DPP publish guidelines for those contemplating assisting another to commit suicide. The DPP produced a consultation paper (23 September 2009) seeking to achieve a public consensus, albeit outside Parliament, on the factors to be taken into account in determining when not to prosecute assisted suicide. Although the consultation exercise is hailed by proponents of legislative change as a democratic, consensus-building and autonomy-enhancing initiative, there is much to suggest that, on the contrary, the guidance is unconstitutional, arbitrary and at odds with human rights law, properly understood.