Health Care and Human Rights: A World in Need

On February 2, 2008. Weill Cornell Medical College and the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church presented Health Care and Human Rights: A World In Need. The interactive seminar explored questions of physician responsibility and medical ethics in a global community, with an emphasis on the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Americas. The event was moderated by Antonio M. Gotto Jr., M.D., Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College, and Joseph J. Fins, M.D., Chief of the Division of Medical Ethics, Departments of Medicine and Public Health. Dr. Fins’ talk, “From Four Freedoms to Four Challenges,” is posted on the Hastings Center’s Bioethics Forum. Speakers included Division of Medical Ethics faculty members Pablo Rodríguez del Pozo, M.D., Ph.D., J.D., Assistant Professor of Public Health/Qatar, who spoke on the topic, “Global Health Ethics: Lessons From the Middle East”; Holly G. Atkinson, M.D., Co-Director of the Advancing Idealism in Medicine Program at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Public Health at Weill Cornell Medical College, who spoke on “Health as a Human Rights Issue”; and other faculty and students from Weill Cornell Medical College. The seminar concluded with a panel discussion and audience questions. For more information on the event’s speakers and presentations, please see the World-in-Need web site, as well as the Medical College press release about the event.