Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T22:23:04.481Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Thoughts in Dark Times of a World Made New

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Greetings from faraway Australia. We used to think that we were separated from the world’s problems—at once victims and beneficiaries of the tyranny of distance. As recent events have shown, we are all liked together—all are vulnerable. Vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. To global warming. To nuclear catastrophe. To terrorism.

In another September, also in dangerous times, the poet WH. Auden wrote in New York a message for our times. His words have been remembered in recent days. This is what he wrote:

On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , Winter 2002 , pp. 492 - 497
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

A version of these remarks was delivered via videotape as the keynote address at the Health, Law and Human Rights: Exploring the Connections conference on September 29, 2001, at the Temple University Beasley School of Law.Google Scholar
Auden, W.H., “September 1, 1939,” in Osborne, C., ed., W.H.: The Life of a Poet (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979): at 194.Google Scholar
Glendon, M. A., A World Made New—Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (New York: Random House, 2001) (quoting Eleanor Roosevelt).Google Scholar
Gellman, B., “Death Watch: The Belated Global Response to AIDS in Africa,” Washington Post, July 5, 2002, at A1.Google Scholar
Id.Google Scholar
Kirby, M.D., “AIDS Legislation — Turning Up the Heat?,” Australian Law Journal, 60 (1986): at 324 (quoting Peter Piot).Google Scholar
Cf. Kirby, M.D., “AIDS: It Isn’t Really Appropriate,” National AIDS Bulletin (Australian), 14, no. 4 (2001).Google Scholar
Mann, J., “Health and Human Rights: If Not Now, When?,” Health and Human Rights, 2, no. 3 (1998): 113–20, at 113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
UNAIDS/WHO Global AIDS Statistics, AIDS Care, 13, no. 2 (2000): at 263.Google Scholar
Mandela, N., closing address to XIIIth International AIDS Conference, Durban, South Africa, July 13, 2000.Google Scholar
Cameron, E., “The Deafening Silence of AIDS,” the Jonathan Mann Memorial Lecture, XIIIth International AIDS Conference, Durban, South Africa, July 9, 2000, reprinted in Health and Human Rights, 5, no. 1 (2000), available at <http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/fxbcenter/V5N1cameron.htm> (quoting Dr. Mamphela Rampele).Google Scholar
Annan, K., quoted in UNAIDS, A Guide for Meaningful Involvement of NGOs and Civil Society, document for the U.N. General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS (2001).Google Scholar
“China Belatedly Admits Scale of HIV Infection,” Sydney Morning Herald, August 24, 2001, at 6.Google Scholar
“Brazil Ignores Drug Patent to Fight AIDS,” Sydney Morning Herald, August 24, 2001, at 6.Google Scholar
“South African Leader under Fire on AIDS,” International Herald Tribune, July 11, 2000, at 5; “Their Deaths, His Doubts, My Fears,” Washington Post, June 4, 2002, at 1.Google Scholar
The Australian, August 1, 2001, at 5.Google Scholar
Australia, report by Puplick, C., chair, Australian National Commission on AIDS, on U.N. General Assembly Special Session on AIDS (2001, unpublished).Google Scholar
Id.Google Scholar
E.g., Australia, NCHSR Facts and Figures, 2000 Mail Out Survey (condom use).Google Scholar
Sydney Morning Herald, February 7, 2001, at 12, from Los Angeles Times and Washington Post.Google Scholar
Statement by International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, September 20, 2000.Google Scholar
Sydney Morning Herald, October 2, 2000, at 3.Google Scholar
SX Magazine (Sydney), March 5, 2001.Google Scholar
Macan-Markar, M., “AIDS Vaccine Heroes Highlight Struggle Ahead,” IPS News (June 7, 2001).Google Scholar
Gellman, , supra note 4.Google Scholar