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Lawrence O. Gostin's new book begins with the sentence "[t]his is a unique moment to offer a systematic account of global health law" and he is right. The book under review is published at a time when the most influential international institutions are emphasizing the necessity for multilateral cooperation in the field of public health. For example, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) addresses this point in its current deliberations on the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals Agenda. Contemporary globalization has irrevocably made borders porous to capital, services, goods, and persons. Global social, economic, and political changes, such as increasing industrialization, urbanization, environmental degradation, migration, drug trafficking, and the marketing strategies of transnational corporations (e.g., in the food, pharmaceutical, and tobacco industries) have a significant impact on health. This impact is transnational and intersectoral: global health hazards go beyond the control of individual nation states and extend beyond the restricted field of health care.
In Global Health Law these new challenges, their causes, and characteristics are explained comprehensively and illustrated with pertinent examples (Chapter 2). Gostin devotes one chapter to the description of what he calls "global health hazards" in order to give a complete picture of the current situation and to inform the reader about his approach. He emphasizes three relevant points. The first deals with the multiplicity of health hazards that have a global character: infectious diseases as traditional global health challenges that first emerged many centuries ago; non-communicable diseases (NCDs) that have become the main source of mortality not only in developed countries, but also in low- and middle-income countries; injuries that are normally ignored as global challenges for health; and unsafe products, food, and medicines that threaten public health. The second issue is the origin of these hazards that are caused directly or indirectly by
