Hayes J A
Free University of Berlin, Germany.
Med Law. 1992;11(5-6):405-16.
Health care is recognized as a right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and by the World Health Organization's Declaration on the Rights of Patients. This article demonstrates that this concept of a 'right' to health care draws strong support from leading modern works on natural law and justice and responds to the arguments, both theoretical and practical, put forward against this proposition. It concludes with two warnings: (a) Even in a system where health care is said to be a right, this can be meaningless if the system does not promote basic health, fails to set proper legal and ethical controls or ignores the important individual rights of patients. (b) Our primary commitment must be to those persons who are denied access to health care. To them, talk of patient's individual rights is superfluous. They cannot claim such rights if they are denied the more fundamental right to be a patient.
医疗保健被《世界人权宣言》及世界卫生组织的《患者权利宣言》视为一项权利。本文表明，这种医疗保健“权利”的概念从现代关于自然法与正义的主要著作中获得了有力支持，并回应了针对这一主张提出的理论和实践论据。文章最后提出两点警示：（a）即使在一个声称医疗保健是一项权利的体系中，如果该体系不能促进基本健康、未能建立适当的法律和道德控制或忽视患者的重要个人权利，那么这可能毫无意义。（b）我们的首要承诺必须是针对那些无法获得医疗保健的人。对他们而言，谈论患者的个人权利是多余的。如果他们被剥夺了成为患者这一更基本的权利，就无法主张此类权利。
