During the sessions, patients would get advice on a range of options, from minimal medical interventions to demanding that every treatment possible be offered near the end of life.
David Cameron last night seized on Rammell's intervention to demand a public inquiry into the release of Megrahi, claiming that Brown now stands accused of double dealing.
What PCT's and local organisations fail to do is to recognise publicly the importance of the national large scale complex interventions and to demand them and express support for them.
Doing this in one case would open the floodgates for others to demand intervention — and this would include defending vaccination supporters as well as critics, hardly a tenable position.
Such diffusion of responsibility can be counteracted if -- at the moment that a reader feels empathy for others -- they are provided ways to act immediately, for example by making a donation or calling representatives and senators to demand intervention.
This is particularly evident in the emphasis on aid effectiveness, stronger engagement mechanisms with recipients (e.g. use of country systems), donor harmonisation, the move from supply driven to demand driven interventions and greater emphasis on political economy issues in development.
While we typically take refusals of treatment to be sacrosanct, our respect for autonomy does not extend to recognizing an unlimited right to demand particular interventions at will.
Furthermore, the society has the right to demand that interventions offered are based on scientific evidence and that they are cost-effective [ 9- 11].
For some types of interventions, it may be appropriate to demand that applicants provide a quantitative prediction of population health impact.
Examples of capacity development for participation and joint planning with communities are few [ 83], but without understanding the knowledge base, practices and communication systems in a given community the chances of a 'one size fits all' approach to demand side interventions improving access to maternal health remain slim.
