Human rights, science and development spotlight at Sci.Dev

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The SciDev.net website is devoted to communicating news and views about science, technology and the developing world. I have used material from their excellent website to blog in the past, particularly their informative section on research ethics. Last week, they published a Spotlight entitled Linking Human Rights, Science and Development, including a number of opinion pieces about the promise of technological development (particularly in medicine, agriculture, and communications) for developing countries. The main thrust of the articles is that technological advances and investments in the developing world must be informed by/constrained by human rights considerations in order to avoid exploitation of persons and natural resources, to combat research being disproportionally focused on disease affecting the more world’s affluent nations, to ensure equitable access to health and health care, to involve more women in science and otherwise combat gender inequity, and to increase benefits of scientific advances for local communities. All of this sounds fine and good, but of course the more you put into the job description of human rights, the more expectations you create, as well as more skepticism: to what extent can human rights really deliver any of this?I have been in two minds about human rights approaches to anything for quite awhile

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Human rights, science and development spotlight at Sci.Dev

Posted by Global Bioethics on Oct 1 2012. Filed under Policy & Systems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry