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The papers assembled in this offering are the outcome of a path-breaking symposium on HIV and Human Rights organised by the University of the West Indies Cave Hill, in partnership with Pan Caribbean Partnership against HIV/AIDS (PANCAP) and The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). An impressive gathering of international agencies, the judiciary, human rights experts, lawyers, NGOs, academics, activists, business persons, union representatives, politicians and persons living with HIV together discussed their concerns about stigma, discrimination and the denial of rights. It was clear at the end of the Symposium that HIV attracts a wide variety of human rights abuses. However, identifying the best means to address these can be controversial, as illustrated in the book. Is it through Constitutions and their provisions guaranteeing human rights generally? Or should redress be sought through the courts, or ordinary legislation? The urgency of the matter perhaps makes the latter a more attractive approach. The book also illustrates clearly the social and legal issues faced by the protagonists in the HIV challenge and considers the viewpoints of the policy makers, who must not only encourage new, more rights sensitive laws, but also counter societal prejudices which would mitigate against such transformational initiatives. Moreover, the influences of the international community, also represented in the work, must be harnessed. This then, is a diverse text, which considers the troubling, topical and important issue of HIV from a variety of angles and provides a significant contribution to the literature on the subject.

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Bibliography

Observations on the Changes of the Air and the Concomitant Epidemical Diseases in the Island of Barbadoes was first published in 1759 in London. Remarkably, a third edition was published in Philadelphia in 1812, with praise and annotations by the most famous American physician, Dr. Benjamin Rush, and with good reason.

It is certainly the first comprehensive documentation of an epidemiological nature, in English, in the Caribbean, and justifies the title first Caribbean epidemiologist for Dr Hillary. He made rigourous observations and clear deductions that have stood the test of time surprisingly well. As Sir George Alleyne, director emeritus of PAHO, says: We marvel at the conclusions he drew from his observations without the use of the technology which we have at our disposal. We are surprised by the accuracy of the symptomatology he describes. 

Indeed, Hillary is famous for the earliest description of tropical sprue, but his description of what seemed to be yellow fever but was not contagious, as yellow fever was then thought to be, was absolutely accurate and this Barbados jaundice turned out to be leptospirosis. His methods, his clinical skills and his eloquent writing deserve to be widely read.