[COMMENTARY] A letter to the C.E.O of Apple Inc.

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By Ralph Litzinger PhD

Dear C.E.O of Apple Inc.,

For many years I have been a loyal customer of Apple.  I have bought many of your products:  the iTouch, iPhone, iMAC, and new MacBook Pro, to name just a few.  Like many Apple users, I was an avid fan of the wonderfully witty commercials that pitted cool, hip and trendy Mac users against the staid and blasé conventionality of Microsoft users.  I embraced Apple for its brilliant operating system, its commitment to making user-friendly tools, and its aesthetic sensibility.  Apple crafts beautifully designed machines, which is one reason your market share continues to grow.

But it seems there is another Apple that few of your customers know about.

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[NEWS] China’s Report to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Right to Health / 中国给联合国经济社会文化权委员会的报告: 健康权

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Below is the section of
China’s report to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on
how it protects the right of all citizens to the highest available standard of
health. 下面是中国给联合国的经济社会文化权的关于保护公民健康权的报告。

 

NGOs can submit their
own reports as well. For information on the requirements and process to submit
an NGO report, see https://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cescr/NGOs.htm

NGO也可以给联合国自己的报告关于国内健康权的情况，如果想这样做请访问这个网站（英语）：https://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cescr/NGOs.htm

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[REPORT] Structural Violence in a Refugee Community

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Su_pterygium.jpg

By Celina Su

In 2000, I began to work with a small, community-based project called the Burmese
Refugee Project (BRP) in northwest Thailand. Using a participatory
model of community development, the BRP helps over 100 Burmese Shan refugees in
northwest Thailand access education, health, and legal services. Through this
work, I learned that refugees are the victims of what public health researchers
call structural violence–physical and mental harm that results from unjust social, economic, and political
structures. Many of the prescriptions that would treat these ailments–such as a shared wheelbarrow so
that the refugees do not have to carry 50-kilo bags of rice on their shoulders,
and for the man above, sunglasses to treat pterygium (a scar on the eyes caused
by sun damage)–fall outside typical medical practice.

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[REPORT] The Evolution of Education

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By Marcus Swanepoel

Marcus and his wife, Amina Evangelista Swanepoel, are in the
early stages of founding a new reproductive health NGO in the rural
Philippines, Roots of Health. This is one in an occasional series of blogs
about their experiences.

“Who can tell me the answer….
Marcus?” I hear the voice of my second grade teacher calling on me to answer a
question to which I have no answer. The feeling of humiliation that I’d feel
still haunts me today. In class I would always sink into my seat when my
teacher uttered those dreaded words. At that point of my life, school was
stressful for me, and I didn’t like going. My negative experiences regarding
school however, pale in comparison to those of the children at Pulang Lupa [in
the Philippines].

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[COMMENTARY] Bill Easterly’s Burden

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By Gregg Gonsalves
Yale University and the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition

Comments at
The Future of Development:
Human Rights and International Aid Beyond the Economic Crisis
Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellowship Symposium
April 8-9, 2010
Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights
Yale Law School, 127 Wall Street, New Haven, CT

* * *
Good afternoon. Greetings from up on Science Hill, where I just got out of a
class on evolutionary biology. Permit me to use one analogy today–only because it seems so apt.  A new book by a fairly well-known philosopher named Jerry Fodor has just come out. It’s called What
Darwin Got Wrong. This isn’t some creationist tract. Dr. Fodor apparently believes in evolution, but he thinks Darwin erred by claiming natural selection is responsible for it.  The book hasn’t been well-received among scientists–not because we have a vested interest in this 150-year-old theory, but because the evidence supports natural selection and Dr. Fodor’s description of it only remotely resembles the phenomenon.

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