II—Gopal Sreenivasan: A Human Right to Health? Some Inconclusive Scepticism

Abstract

This paper offers four arguments against a moral human right to health, two denying that the right exists and two denying that it would be very useful (even if it did exist). One of my sceptical arguments is familiar, while the other is not. The unfamiliar argument is an argument from the nature of health. Given a realistic view of health production, a dilemma arises for the human right to health. Either a state's moral duty to preserve the health of its citizens is not justifiably aligned in relation to the causes of health or it does not correlate with the human right to health. It follows that no one holds a justified moral human right to health against the state. Education and herd immunity against infectious disease both illustrate this dilemma. In the former case, the state's moral duty correlates with the human right to health only if it demands too much from a cause of health; and in the latter, only if it demands nothing from a cause of health (that is, too little).

The right to public health

“…I am thus inclined to think that the normative core of public health lies in systematic attempts to reduce health risks, rather than in the provision of public goods. Given this, I am fairly unmoved by sceptical arguments such as those of Sreenivasan,27 which aim to refute the idea of a right to public health on the basis of difficulties in justifying rights to public goods. Public health often involves public goods, but even more often it involves risk reductions for individuals, and it is these risk reductions for individuals that are the key justifying factor on a rights-based approach to public health.…”

“…xxvSreenivasan27 seems to assume on this basis that apparent rights such as the right to security cannot be waived, and so could not be rights on the will theory of rights. This seems to misunderstand the relationship between waivability and will theory rights.…”

Philosophy of Globalization

“…He also considers the arguments that try to replace 'health' for 'health care' in the formulation of this human right to dismiss the 'natureo fh ealth' argument, and to claim that what is beingdemanded is not an outcome but aservice. He discredits this too, by pointingo ut that health care is just one part of whataright to health pretends to claim, so that it would be amorallydefeatingstrategytofalselyequatehealth to health care.These arguments arev ery importantt ounderstand Sreenivasan'sposition, but Ihavedecided to focus just on his argument against the possibility of ah uman right to health, and not against ar ight to health in general, because Ic onsider that it emphasizes an important difficulty entailed by a common conception of what it takesf or somethingt ober egarded as ah uman right.S ee: Sreenivasan (2012;.  "While claim rights arem irror images of obligations,n ot all obligations have mirror images (…)T his thoughtb yi tself is reason enough to begin with obligations and not with rights."…”

The place of human rights and the common good in global health policy

“…Now, Gopal Sreenivasan has recently expressed scepticism about the global health policy significance of the human right to health [36]. His claim is that, once common or public health goods are acknowledged, most of the requirements ordinarily thought to derive from the human right to health cannot be so understood.…”