ABSTRACT
‘Unlike certain other social animals, we have no collective social instinct or biological solidarity that is automatically aroused by the destruction of our fellow kind,’ Mike Davis (2005, 3) writes in his book about the global threat of avian influenza. Global communications have brought the fate of our fellow kind into full view, with contradictory effects. On the one hand, it has normalised human tragedy in distant places, whether emerging from natural disasters, war, famine, or pandemic disease. But, on the other hand, it has brought home the message that we are interdependent, that security at home is affected by events far away. Recent pandemics have made it clear that public health crises cross borders and we are all vulnerable; it is clear that global health challenges require global responses. In this context, the G8 — the world’s richest and most powerful countries — in partnership with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) — has emerged as a major player in shaping global health policy, prompting a growing scholarly debate concerning the G8’s role and influence in the global health arena. As John Kirton and Jenevieve Mannell write in Chapter 9, the ‘debate ranges widely from the critics who think the G8 has done too little, done too much of the wrong thing, or failed to deliver the good promises it has made through to supporters who claim the G8 has already filled some gaps, has the potential to do much more, and is already delivering a new generation of health governance for a globalising world’. Other concerns range from questions of accountability, transparency, and democratic process in G8 decision making to more complex questions about the relationship between the deepening privatisation of power accompanying the neo-liberal market model of development supported and sustained by the G8 and the international financial institutions (IFIs) and the exercise of human rights, including the right to health.
