This thesis uses the four principles of biomedical ethics as put forth by Beauchamp and Childress to address the issue of the criminalization of sex work in contemporary national and international settings. Though a controversial subject, the existence of sex work has been a constant for centuries worldwide. However, the criminalization of sex work in contemporary society has been largely predicated on the conflation of sex work and a number of social ills, particularly human trafficking and sexual exploitation. This uncritical and inappropriate conflation of terms has enabled discourse, legislation, and even health care policy that is unethical, ineffective, and explicitly harmful to both sex workers and victims of human trafficking alike.Medical professionals have a unique set of moral obligations to which they must hold themselves in their practice of medicine, both with their individual patients as well as with the society in which they live. This thesis argues that the criminalization of sex work is fundamentally incompatible with contemporary health care ethics, reviewing each of the four fundamental pillars of biomedical ethics as it applies to policies that criminalize sex work. Each chapter will outline the many ways in which criminalization violates each of these fundamental principles, causing immense and largely preventable harm in the form of human rights violations and poor public health outcomes. At the same time, this thesis will introduce the alternative policy of decriminalization, discussing its features and implications for public health, and highlighting the ways in which the decriminalization of sex work results in improved health, safety, and human rights outcomes for both sex workers and victims of sex trafficking, exemplifying a viable, ethical, and evidenced-based alternative to criminalization. Given the gross bioethical and humans rights violations associated with the criminalization of sex work, this thesis concludes that there exists evidence of a substantial ethical imperative on the part of the medical community and its constituent professional societies to formally condemn policies that criminalize any and all aspects of sex work and issue formal recommendations for its urgent decriminalization, as both a public health issue and an issue of human and patients’ rights. / Urban Bioethics

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T20:21:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Virginia Luna Smith.pdf: 1052710 bytes, checksum: ce8b674b93927135478af1483976d7a3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-12-04 / The aim of this doctoral thesis is to instigate the debate on the criminalization of the most usual forms of copyright violation, considering the standoff between the defenders of a stricter legislation to fight piracy and plagiarism and the liberals who believe in the legitimate use of intellectual creations. The impacts of technological improvements on the market, society, communication and on the body of laws will be examined using the Tridimensional Theory of Law, developed by Miguel Reale, to assess to which extent the current facts that would consist in violation of intellectual property are mutually entangled with the penal norms that impose sanctions against violating behaviors and the values present in a society that is becoming more global, connected and computerized every day / Este trabalho tem por objetivo instigar o debate acerca da criminalização das mais usuais formas de violação ao direito autoral, considerando o impasse que se verifica entre os defensores de uma legislação de combate mais rígida ao plágio e à pirataria, e os liberais que sustentam o uso justo das criações intelectuais. Os impactos promovidos pelos avanços tecnológicos no mercado, na sociedade, na comunicação e no ordenamento jurídico serão examinados utilizando como matriz teórica a Teoria Tridimensional do Direito, desenvolvida por Miguel Reale, para avaliar em que medida se implicam mutuamente os fatos atuais que consistiriam em violação aos direitos de autor, as normas penais que impõem sanções para as condutas violadoras, e os valores presentes em uma sociedade a cada dia mais globalizada, conectada e informatizada