The Past Guides the Future: Implementing the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies

The authors describe the ways in which the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (MSJCC; Ratts, Singh, Nassar-McMillan, Butler, & McCullough, 2015) can be viewed from a human rights framework and as the latest iteration in the long history of the multicultural and social justice counseling competency movement. MSJCC implementation and integration are explored, and recommendations for innovating the MSJCC are described.     

Religion and the Human Rights Idea

Three recent books focus, in different ways, on the idea of human rights and its relation to religion and religious ethics. All three books discussed here address criticisms of the human rights idea and seek to establish the relationship of religion and human rights with regard to the field of policy. The present discussion begins with an overview that places these three books in the larger context of the development of the human rights idea and its historical relationship with religion. It then turns to Little's book, next to the collection of essays edited by Twiss, Simion, and Petersen, which is described internally as a Festschrift for Little, and then to Hogan's book, and in the final section it explores comparisons among the books.     

Conflict of interest in medicine in Lithuania: legal and ethical aspects

The current legal framework within the Lithuanian health system is described including a review of the physician’s autonomy, rights and duties, and patients’ rights including the right to reimbursement. The role of ethical codes and the law are discussed. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an International Conference on “Conflict of Interest and its Significance in Science and Medicine” held in Warsaw, Poland on 5–6 April, 2002.     

Hotep's Story: Exploring the Wounds of Health Vulnerability in the US

A wide variety of forms of domination hasresulted in a highly heterogeneous health riskcategory, ``the vulnerable.' The study of healthinequities sheds light on forces thatgenerate, sustain, and alter vulnerabilities toillness, injury, suffering and death. Thispaper analyzes the case of a high-risk teenfrom a Boston ghetto that illuminatesintersections between ``race' and class in theconstruction of vulnerability in the US.Exploration of his ``wounds' helps specify howlarge-scale social and cultural forces becomeembodied as individual experience of disparatehealth risk. The case demonstrates that healthinequities would not occur if resources –employment, income, wealth, education, housing,profiling in the legal system, and health care– were more justly managed in keeping withstandards outlined in the Universal Declarationof Human Rights. Professional responses to the``wounds of vulnerability' may reveal importantaspects of who we are and what our work asscholars, practitioners, and advocates mustbecome.     

From case management to prevention of scientific dishonesty in Denmark

In 1992, The Danish Medical Research Council established a national committee on scientific dishonesty with the twofold task of handling cases of scientific misconduct and taking preventive initiatives. Scientific dishonesty was proven in only five cases, but in another nine cases lesser degrees of deviations from good scientific practice were found. The experiences from a total of 24 treated cases indicated that three key areas were at the basis of most of the accusations and the deviations from good practice: uncertainty about 1) authorship, about 2) rights and duties to use scientific data and about 3) agreements at the initiation of joint studies. As a consequence guidelines on good practice have been issued on these key subjects. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a symposium, Scientific Misconduct. An International Perspective, organised by The Medical University of Warsaw, 16 November, 1998.     

The Duty to Eradicate Global Poverty: Positive or Negative?

In World Poverty and Human Rights, Thomas Pogge argues that the global rich have a duty to eradicate severe poverty in the world. The novelty of Pogges approach is to present this demand as stemming from basic commands which are negative rather than positive in nature: the global rich have an obligation to eradicate the radical poverty of the global poor not because of a norm of beneficence asking them to help those in need when they can at little cost to themselves, but because of their having violated a principle of justice not to unduly harm others by imposing on them a coercive global order that makes their access to the objects of their human right to subsistence insecure. In this paper, I claim that although Pogge is right in arguing that negative duties are crucial in an account of global justice, he is wrong in saying that they are the only ones that are crucial. Harming the global poor by causing their poverty provides a sufficient but not a necessary condition for the global rich to have a duty of justice to assist them. After engaging in a critical analysis of Pogges argument, I conclude by suggesting the need for a robust conception of cosmopolitan solidarity that includes positive duties of assistance which are not mere duties of charity, but enforceable ones of justice.     

Ethical Assumptions in Economic Theory: Some Lessons from the History of Credit and Bankruptcy

This paper evaluates the economic assumptions of economic theory via an examination of the capitalist transformation of creditor–debtor relations in the 18th century. This transformation enabled masses of people to obtain credit without moral opprobrium or social subordination. Classical 18th century economics had the ethical concepts to appreciate these facts. Ironically, contemporary economic theory cannot. I trace this fault to its abstract representations of freedom, efficiency, and markets. The virtues of capitalism lie in the concrete social relations and social meanings through which capital and commodities are exchanged. Contrary to laissez faire capitalism, the conditions for sustaining these concrete capitalist formations require limits on freedom of contract and the scope of private property rights.     

The Mpowerment Project: community-building with young gay and bisexual men to prevent HIV1

The Mpowerment Project is a community-level HIV prevention intervention for young gay and bisexual men ages 18–27. The program seeks to build a strong, supportive young gay and bisexual men's community where young gay and bisexual men nurture and protect each other, particularly with regard to HIV prevention. The program's theoretical framework draws from the areas of diffusion of innovations, community organizing, peer influence, and personal empowerment. The Mpowerment Project promotes a norm for safer sex through a variety of social, outreach and small group activities. The project is run by a Core Group of 12–15 young gay and bisexual men who, with volunteers, design and carry out all project activities. Implemented in 4 communities (Eugene, OR; Santa Barbara, CA; Albuquerque, NM; Austin, TX), the Mpowerment Project has proven to be effective in reducing high risk sex. This paper discusses the development and implementation of the program and various challenges encountered.     

In Defense of Individualism

This paper offers a programmatic philosophical articulation of moral and political individualism. This individualism consists of two main components: value individualism and rights individualism. The former is the view that, for each individual, the end which is of ultimate value is his own well-being. Each individual's well-being has ultimate agent-relative value and the only ultimate values are these agent-relative values. The latter view is that individuals possess moral jurisdiction over themselves, i.e., rights of self-ownership. These rights (along with other rights individuals may come to possess) constrain the manner in which agents may pursue value. For this reason, the articulated individualism is an constrained individualism. Sketches of arguments are offered for both value and rights individualism. And it is argued that the sole legitimate function of legal/political institutions is to further delineate and protect the rights of individuals. However, the paper is also concerned to indicate why this radical moral and political individualism does not have many of the features or implications that are commonly ascribed to it. In this connection, I seek to show how this social doctrine accords with individuals' having concern for the well-being of others, with the emergence of relationships among individuals that have both instrumental and non-instrumental value, with a degree of responsibility for self and others that is often thought to be antithetical to individualism and, in general, with a flourishing of civil order.