ABSTRACT
The globalization of science and medicine has introduced new challenges for human rights as new technologies create new boundaries for the body and governance strives to define corresponding boundaries of the person. New diseases, medicines, procedures, and research modalities push human rights beyond the defense of the bodily integrity of individuals from state coercion. The source of both boundary violations and putative duties is usually private, whether physicians, firms, or academic institutions. Medical phenomena such as the transmission of communicable disease or the transplantation of organs are public issues not reducible to an individual’s relationship with a physician or scientist, and states struggle to regulate them but cannot fully encompass their transnational dimension. New procedures and research to address health problems often have collective implications, whether for families consenting to organ donations or entire ethnic groups affected by genetic privacy. Although new practices are often experienced as threats to human dignity, it is sometimes unclear exactly which rights are affected-or how to evaluate competing rights of patients versus society, donors versus recipients, or privacy versus freedom of inquiry.
