Social Justice

In early March, George W. Bush announced the creation of the President's Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warriors as a way of ending controversy over substandard treatment of injured U.S. personnel at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Richard Zitrin, a San Francisco-based lawyer who teaches at the University of California, warns that the willingness of lawyers to reach secret out-of-court agreements with drug companies can have dangerous consequences for patients.

The Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) has called for the termination of Hill & Knowlton's contract defending the repressive government of the Maldives. The MDP calculated that the PR firm has been paid $800,000 over almost three years.

Last July, labor activist Junya Lek Yimprasert took up the cause of five women workers dismissed by the Thai subsidiary of the global PR firm Publicis Groupe. She described alleged sexual discrimination and intimidation at the firm's Bangkok office to reporter Stephen Frost of CSR Asia (PDF).