Synopses & Reviews
Africa poses daunting medical, social, and economic challenges, placing local, regional, national, and international communities at a moral crossroads. This book, the first to systematically examine the ethical implications of the AIDS pandemic for Africa, examines such pressing questions as: How do we deal with the uncertainties surrounding AIDS statistics? Is it really too costly to provide people highly active antiretroviral therapies in Africa? What is the relationship between AIDS and poverty? Is the political leadership in South Africa doing what is right and prudent to meet the challenge of AIDS? Is the developed world responding responsibly and justly to this crisis in the developing world? Is it moral for companies to make profits from AIDS drugs? Given the scope of the crisis, ought First World ethical standards for doing research on AIDS drugs and vaccines to apply unchanged to Africa? Ought we to include children in research for AIDS vaccines, and if so, how? Why do people persist in regarding AIDS as punishment for sin?
Review
this book will help spur a needed reconceptualization of the scope and nature of the AIDS pandemic
. The editors seek to bring a global bioethics perspective to an issue whose debates have largely been dominated by medical doctors, politicians, and economists
. Drawing on the expertise of scholars in the United States, Europe, and Africa, and from a variety of disciplines, this volume probes the complexities inherent to an epidemic that calls into question many assumptions about the international economic system, the provision of health care, and the proper conduct of medical research. By focusing on the ethical dimensions of the AIDS epidemic in Africa, the volume's contributors call attention to broader issues of economics and politics.”
Reviewed for H-SAfrica by Jeremy Youde, Grinnell College
Review
Ethics and AIDS in Africa is a highly illuminating, stimulating and informative guide to the ethical dilemmas faced by researchers, policymakers, and health care providers in the countries hardest hit by HIV/AIDS. The book clearly delivers on its promise that HIV/AIDS, as it continues to ravage low-resource countries of Africa, challenges everyone's ethical thinking.”
AIDS Research and Therapy 3:24
Review
Ethics and AIDS in Africa is a welcome contribution to the reality of how AIDS is negotiated in sub-Saharan Africa....The 13 chapters are written concisely, offering bold observations and suggestions about the struggle for global parity about AIDS in Africa....As a seminal text, it provides the reader a vast range of issues surrounding HIV/AIDs as a global tragedy that will affect all people if the recommendations provided by these scholars are not utilized.”
Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment
Synopsis
This first book to systematically examine the ethical implications of the AIDS pandemic for Africa, addresses such questions as the relationship between AIDS and poverty, the responsibility of the developed world to respond to the African, the morality of private companies profiting from AIDS drugs, the use of children in clinical trials, and other questions.
About the Author
Anton A. Van Niekerk is Director of the Centre for Applied Ethics at the University of Stellenbosch.
Loretta M. Kopelman is Chairperson of the Department of Medical Humanities, Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University.