Eugene B. Brody UNESCO and Dartmouth Publishing Company, 1993. 312 pages.

(This volume was gifted by the World Health Organisation, Geneva)

This is a book about human rights, in relation to health issues and medical research, written by a doctor who has vast experience as a clinician, editor and international health consultant. Interestingly then, the author ventures into the grey areas of medicine – Should a physician practice euthanasia? Should he abandon the paternalistic attitude when dealing with a mentally ill patient? Should a mentally ill patient be sterilised?

He discusses the highly politicised issue of transplantation of adult and foetal organs and of commercialisation of organ transaction.

Other topics dealt with succinctly and with human insight are the rights to access to biomedical technology, the value of informed consent’ in the context of medical research, public health policy, rights in human reproduction and genetic manipulation.

He also tells of how the medical profession can be used to violate human rights as when totalitarians abuse psychiatric hospitalisation to drown dissent.

The appendices contain the conclusions and resolutions at the end of the UNESCO symposium on the effects on human rights of recent advances in science and technology (Barcelona, March 1985), the full text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and that of the Declaration of Human Rights and Mental Health. The bibliography of references is provided on pages 273- 300. There is a combined subject and author index.

To summarise, a book that explores the relationship between the health seeker and the helper, delves into the issue of health rights in different societies, a book for the scientist, the health professional and the student of medicine.