11/13

Larkin's piece concludes that health policies that have devastating effects on the populations in developing countries are now in the hands of supranational institutions such as the IMF, UN, and World Bank. I think that this piece is interesting to consider with Tuesday's lecture in which Professor Kessler-Harris stated that health issues, in particular reproduction, is one that is a struggle between the control of the state and the control of the individual. In thinking about the article and class, why are health policies moving farther away from the individuals that deal with such decisions, and into the hands of more removed, less representative institutions? What is the trajectory that we are on in terms of policy making and in the framework of individual rights? Especially from a Western context in which human rights standards are valued and advocated the most aggressively, why does this hypocrisy exist and what greater purpose does it serve?