ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a specific professional group within corporations and discusses the manner in which they can use their medical status to influence corporate policies and actions pertaining to human rights. It overviews the field of medical ethics and a discussion of the intersection between medical ethics and the principal document guiding human rights activists and professionals, namely the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The chapter discusses the literature dealing with health professionals and physicians working in corporations. It illustrates the challenges confronting health professionals, and focuses on the issue of organs taken from prisoners executed in China and subsequently sold for transplantation. The chapter considers the specific question of how human rights non-governmental organisations can interface effectively with health professionals. It highlights the positive obligations of physicians to serve as good Samaritans and even actively seek out situations that can benefit humankind. However, the limits to this responsibility are not spelled out.
