WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. – On, February 11, 2002 Pace Law School will host its annual Blain Sloan Lecture presented by Professor George Annas, Edward R. Utley Professor of Health Law and Chair Health Law Department School of Public Health Boston University. Professor Annas’ lecture, Human Rights and Health in a World of Inequality, will be held at Pace Law School in White Plains, NY in The Robert B. Fleming Moot Court Room, with a reception immediately following. Admission to this lecture is free of charge and open to the public.

This presentation will explore the use of human rights language and rhetoric, including the meaning of the "right to health" in international law and efforts to operationalize it, as a strategy to get basic health care, including essential drugs and vaccines, to the world’s populations that cannot afford them. Specific questions that will be addressed include: What does the right to health mean? What obligations do the world’s richest nations have to the world’s poorest nations? What obligations do multinational pharmaceutical companies have to poor people who need access to their products to survive? Do patent rights supersede public health needs? Is the right to health merely an ethical aspiration and political rallying tool, or is it properly viewed as a legally-enforceable right? Do lawyers and physicians have special obligations, because of the nature of their professions, to actively support the international right to health?

George Annas is the Edward R. Utley Professor and Chair of the Health Law Department of Boston University School of Public Health, and Professor in the Boston University School of Medicine and School of Law. He is the cofounder of Global Lawyers and Physicians, a transnational professional association of lawyers and physicians working together to promote human rights and health. He has degrees from Harvard College (AB, economics '67), Harvard Law School (JD '70) and Harvard School of Public Health (MPH '72), as well as an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Salem State College ('94), which he was awarded for "his scholarship, value analysis, and persistent advocacy for human rights." Professor Annas has written more than 200 articles on health law and bioethics.