On
September 2, 1998 Jonathan Mann was tragically killed in the crash
of Swissair Flight 111. Jonathan and his wife, Mary Lou Clements-Mann,
were on their way to Geneva, to the World Health Organization
and to UNAIDS, to pursue work that had taken them all over the
world. Mary Lou and Jonathan were bringing to Geneva their unique
personal and professional partnership to support the global response
to the AIDS pandemic. Mary Lou was bringing her scientific expertise,
and Jonathan his vision of a world where HIV/AIDS would be recognized
and responded to through an expanded health, social and economic
development strategy firmly grounded in human rights.
Jonathan was born in 1947, the year the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights was being drafted. It is
bitterly ironic that he contributed one of his last writings to
this issue of the Journal which commemorates the fiftieth anniversary
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document he treasured
and dedicated his professional life to promoting. We dedicate
this issue of the Journal to his memory and to the ideas that
he nurtured and shared with the world during his too short life.
Jonathan’s life spans and reflects the last 50 years—an era
when international responsibility for health and for human rights
has been increasingly acknowledged. These worlds had evolved along
parallel but distinctly separate tracks, until Jonathan’s creativity
and passion inspired and brought so many human rights and public
health people together. He had the vision to recognize that ultimately
public health and human rights share a common challenge—each
is primarily concerned with ensuring the conditions in which people
can be healthy—and that to meet this challenge was going
to require first that we speak to and learn from one another,
and then that we actually work together.
Jonathan had the charisma and the ability
to reach through layers of bureaucracy and cynicism and to touch
the hearts of people. He inspired people by challenging them.
He challenged people in public health to recognize their dual
responsibility as agents of the state to promote and protect not
only health, but also human rights. He challenged people in human
rights to move beyond just criticizing health policy and government
actions after they had occurred—but to get involved from
the beginning in helping to shape them. Out of this he catalyzed
today’s health and human rights movement.
Jonathan frequently reminded us that our work is possible because
we stand on the shoulders of the giants—the giants in health
and in human rights—who preceded us. He believed deeply in
the possibility of changing the world, of making it a better place.
His life ended before he was fully able to play out his own role
in doing so. We share his belief that the health and human rights
movement has a collective responsibility to move this work forward
as, to use Jonathan’s words, "equal partners in the belief
that the world can change." We will stand on his shoulders,
even as we will deeply miss him.
