Tuskegee Syphilis Study

As society struggles to cope with the many repercussions of assisted life and death, the evening news is filled with stories of legal battles over frozen embryos and the possible prosecution of doctors for their patients' suicides. Using an "institutional" approach as an alternative to the prevailing "rights" based analysis of problems in law and medicine, this study explains why society should resist the tendency to look to science and law for a resolution of intimate matters, such as how our children are born and how we die. Palmer's institutional approach demonstrates that legislative analysis is often more important than judicial analysis when it comes to issues raised by new reproductive technologies and physician-assisted suicide. A reliance on individual rights alone for answers to the complex ethical questions that result from society's faith in scientific progress and science's close alliance with medicine will be insufficient and ill-advised.

This volume widens the perspective of the roles that records play in society. As opposed to most writings in the discipline of archives and records management, which view records from cultural, historical, and economical efficiency dimensions, this volume highlights one of the most salient features of records: the role they play as sources of accountability. The authors demonstrate that records are not mute observers and recordings of activity, rather, they are frequently objects of memory formation and erasure.

This incisive selection of government reports, scholarly articles, and court cases is designed to illuminate the ethical, legal, and political issues in the theory and practice of public health. A companion to the internationally acclaimed "Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint, "this collection encourages debate and discourse about how courts, scholars, and policy makers respond to the salient legal and ethical dilemmas. The excerpts and commentaries in the reader analyze the legal and constitutional foundations of public health, juxtaposing them with the emerging importance of public health ethics and human rights. The book offers a systematic account of public health law, ethics, and human rights in promoting the common good.

Gostin provides thoughtful commentary on the field of public health and carefully explains the meaning and importance of each selection. Scholars, legislators, and public health professionals, as well as faculty and students in schools of law, public health, medicine, nursing,,government, and health administration, will benefit from the contemporary case studies covering a wide range of topics from bioterrorism to public health genetics.