Human rights publications
BMA Board of Science - BMA publications and guidance notes
The BMA’s Board of Science and Education undertakes considerable research and publishes widely on a range of health-related issues. Much of the Board’s work has a public health focus, and much of it is relevant both to the right to health and to broader human rights issues. Publications with a human rights aspect include:
The Right to Health : a toolkit for health professionals
The Right to Health toolkit is designed to provide practical, realistic guidance for health professionals on the meaning and implications of the right to health. It is aimed at an international audience of health care workers and is designed to be rooted in everyday practice.
Asylum seekers: meeting their healthcare needs
A detailed report on the healthcare needs of asylum seekers, with a significant focus on the impact of the asylum process on the health of asylum seekers.
Biotechnology, weapons and humanity II
This second BMA report describes the alarming gap between the quickening pace of scientific discoveries and the desperately slow development of international arms control. It builds on the first BMA report of 1999 and provides practical suggestions on how the principles embodied in the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention can be upheld.
Genetically modified foods and health: 2nd statement
The BMA produced an interim report in 1999 on the health implications of GM food crops. This second statement reviews and updates that earlier report in light of emerging evidence.
Housing and Health
This report looks at the relationship between health and housing. It suggests ways of ensuring that all individuals can benefit from good quality housing and discusses ways in which government housing policy can be taken forward.
Asylum applicants: medical reports: guidelines for examining doctors
Joint guidelines from the BMA and the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture on drawing up medical reports to support asylum applications.
Asylum seekers – access to healthcare
Guidelines on the legal situation regarding the eligibility of asylum seekers to free NHS care.
Asylum seekers and health
A dossier of case examples, put together by the BMA and the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, which documents the difficulty asylum seekers have experienced in accessing health care.
Impact of the Human Rights Act on medical decision-making
A brief outline of the likely impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 on medical decision-making in the United Kingdom.
BMA publications - books
A Right to Health Toolkit
The British Medical Association, working with the Commonwealth Medical Association (COMMAT), has published a toolkit for health professionals on the practical implications of the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.
The Medical Profession and Human Rights (2001)
An encyclopaedic handbook dealing with all aspects of medicine and human rights. With 20 chapters and over 500 page, it remains the definitive work in the field.
Medicine Betrayed (1992)
The BMA’s 1992 report examines the participation of doctors in abuses of human rights in a variety of countries and contexts. It sets out clear ethical standards and looks at doctors who have been subject to repression.
The Torture Report (1986)
Published in 1986, this is the report of the BMA’s first working party investigating the involvement of doctors in torture.
Other BMA resources
Doctors working in prison: human rights and ethical dilemmas
Professor Vivienne Nathanson, Professor Ann Sommerville and Dr Julian Sheather, all from the BMA, have contributed chapters to the first on-line course on human rights and medical ethics in prison medicine. The course was produced by the Norwegian Medical Association, and is hosted by the World Medical Association. In November 2005, the BMA learned that this course has become mandatory for all prison health workers in Argentina. The course is currently available in English and Spanish, but a Russian edition is being planned following widespread calls from the countries of the former Soviet Union.
A copy of the course is available at: http://lupin-nma.net/index.cfm?m=2&s=1&kursid=50&file=kurs/K050/intro.cfm
Departmental teaching and lecturing in human rights
Members of the BMA Ethics Department lecture widely in health and human rights. The aim of this work is to disseminate BMA policy as widely as possible, and to ensure that the importance of human rights in both medicine and the broader public health is recognised. The BMA would like to see a human rights component integrated into the undergraduate medical curriculum. Regular lecturing slots include:
- Institute for Commonwealth Studies – MA in Understanding and Securing Human Rights. Read more here - http://www2.sas.ac.uk/commonwealthstudies/ma_human.htm.
- Imperial College London – Short Course in Medical Ethics. Read more here - http://www.imperial.ac.uk/cpd/medeth/schedule.htm.
- International Federation of Health and Human Rights Organisations (IFHHRO) Annual Conference