Within contemporary society, globalization has emerged as a key concern at the centre of ethical, legal and policy debates relating to health care. Conflicts between public interests and individual rights, the challenge of regulating health professionals and access to health services, and the effects of a global market all feature prominently in these discussions. As a result of globalization, these issues can no longer be understood solely within the political boundaries that define traditional notions of individuals and communities. Rather, solutions demand a global conception of rights and obligations, which in turn requires new approaches to health policy formulation and a reevaluation of existing ethical and legal frameworks. In essence, the impact of globalization on human health is testing the robustness of modern regulatory systems, legal doctrines and ethical paradigms. PUBLIC HEALTH: DEVELOPING GLOBAL CONCERNS The interconnectedness of the global economy presents new challenges in public health. While globalization has facilitated improvements in health care, it has also created new hazards and avenues for the exploitation of vulnerable persons. It is becoming increasingly apparent that both national and international responses are required. Indeed, as the chapters in this section convey, public health is rightly a global concern. Globalization has led to a sharing of both risks and responsibilities in public health. Belinda Bennett reminds us of the ease with which infectious diseases can spread within the global community, given the speed of modern travel and trade.

This volume draws together essays from leading scholars on the challenges that arise for health, law, policy and ethics at the intersections of health, rights and globalization. The papers in this volume address global issues in public health, globalization and bioethics, and globalization and biotechnology. This volume will be invaluable to all those interested in global issues in health.

This book uncovers the ways in which human rights influence global efforts to promote the health of the most vulnerable in a globalizing world. It examines the evolving relationship between human rights, global governance, and public health, studying an expansive set of health challenges through a multi-sectoral array of global organizations. -- Provided by publisher.

The effect of Globalization on health has attracted the attention of scholars and policy makers across multiple disciplines. A key concern is the regulation of international health protection, and in particular the use of international health instruments and the complex interaction between international law and health considerations. For the first time, a group of law and policy scholars have analysed these issues, drawing on knowledge from their respective fields. The resulting book provides comprehensive coverage of contemporary issues in global health law and governance.

Within contemporary society the themes of globalization, health and regulation interlock in complex patterns, changing in response to the mix of cultural differences, regulatory preferences and available resources. To turn the kaleidoscope and to change the mix is to change the pattern. This book is about those patterns as they arise in the contemporary legal, health and ethical context, exploring the transformations and challenges brought by technological change and the regulatory options in the contemporary global village.

The Globalization of Health Care is the first book to offer a comprehensive legal and ethical analysis of the most interesting and broadest reaching development in health care of the last twenty years: its globalization. It ties together the manifestation of this globalization in four related subject areas - medical tourism, medical migration (the physician "brain drain"), telemedicine, and pharmaceutical research and development, and integrates them in a philosophical discussion of issues of justice and equity relating to the globalization of health care. The time for such an examination is right. Medical tourism and telemedicine are growing multi-billion-dollar industries affecting large numbers of patients. The U.S. heavily depends on foreign-trained doctors to staff its health care system, and nearly forty percent of clinical trials are now run in the developing world, with indications of as much of a 10-fold increase in the past 20 years. NGOs across the world are agitating for increased access to necessary pharmaceuticals in the developing world, claiming that better access to medicine would save millions from early death at a relatively low cost. Coming on the heels of the most expansive reform to U.S. health care in fifty years, this book plots the ways in which this globalization will develop as the reform is implemented.

This book explores the extent to which globalisation and commercialisation relate to current and emerging health policies. It also looks at the implications for citizens, patients and social rights, as well as how policy making interacts with the interests of global and European trade and economic policies.