The Human Right to Health, Access to Essential Medicines, and the Virtue of Creative Resolve

Nicole J. Hassoun, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy & Affiliate Health Outcomes & Administrative Sciences, Binghamton University, Residential Fellow, The Philosophy of Hope and Optimism, Cornell University

Living with untreated AIDS is devastating.  Patients often suffer from terrible lesions, pneumonia, nausea, become emaciated, have seizures and eventually die. Prof. Hassoun argues that there should be an enforceable legal human right to health that includes a right to access essential medicines to treat diseases like AIDS, contending that the role of the human right to health is to provide a kind of hope that can foster the virtue of creative resolve. This resolve is a fundamental commitment to finding creative solutions to what appear to be tragic dilemmas. Rather than helping us decide how to ration scarce resources, the human right to health gives us reason to find ways to fulfill everyone’s claims.

Cosponsors:Philosphy Department,  Religion Department, Global Health, Privilege and Poverty Academic Cluster