2008] The Minimum Core of Economic and Social Rights 131 health addresses the medical needs of the elderly population,95 or of those of the terminally ill.96 Moreover, the emphasis on mini malism behind the core becomes suggestive, when attached to life, of a more scien tific assessment of the commodities necessary for biological su rvival. This assessment reveals its own controversies and indeterminacies. As Amartya Sen pointed out long ago, the requirements of survival are not as straightforward as they might appear. People have been known to survive with incred ibly little nutrition, and there seem s to be a cumulative improvement of life expectation as the dietary limits are raised. . . . There is difficulty in drawing a line so mewhere, and the so-called ‘m inimum nutritional requirements’ have an inherent arbitrarin ess that goes well beyond variations betw een groups and regions.97 The determinations of “normal” life expectancy and mo rtality patterns, the adequate caloric and nutritional f ood packages, and minimum room for housing space, all fail as determinate universal cont ent for the rights to food, health, or housing. Of course, the existe nce of a range of disagreement around the line drawn can still de liver a nominate standard which may allow for a context-sensitive adjustment in partic ular cases with little precedential importance. Yet this concession takes us outside of the realm of the minimum core, understood as the content of a lega l right, and into the more flexible arena of setting standards and devising benchmarks.98 This minimalist mode of investiga tion actually recalls the discourse, ascendant in the developm ent literature of the 1970 s, of “basic needs.”99 This discourse, which indicated a turn away from pure econ omic growth strategies towards social indicators and antipoverty strategies, was an earlier rendering, and perhaps forecaster, of the fo cus on “human” deve lopment and the Millennium Development Goals. 100 One effect of the attenti on to “basic 95. See generally Norman Daniels, Justice between the Young and the Old: Rationing from an International Prospective, in CHOOSING WHO’S TO LIVE: ETHICS AND AGING 24, 25 (James W. Walters ed., 1996) (referring to fears of the elderly population’s “‘bottomless pit’ of needs”). 96. See, e.g., Soobramoney v Minister of Health 1998 (1) SA 765 (CC) at 771-72 (S. Afr.) (holding that the constitution ’s right of access to healthcare does not guarantee provision of renal dialysis for terminally ill patien t); Scott & Als ton, supra note 7, at 251-252 (endorsing the separate reasons of Justice Sachs in Soobramoney as demonstrating “a philosophy of the value of human life in a context of a philosophy of unavoidable dying”); see also Lehmann, supra note 6, at 168 (suggesting that, in “the starkest terms, the choice was between Mr. Soobramoney’s death and the death or suffering of others.”). For further discussion, see infra note 319 and accompanying text. 97. AMARTYA SEN, POVERTY AND FAMINES: AN ESSAY ON ENTITLEMENT AND DEPRIVATION 12 (1982); see also Jean Drèze, Democracy and the Right to F ood, in HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEVELOPMENT: TOWARDS MUTUAL REINFORCEMENT 45, 55 (Philip Alston & Mary Robinson eds., 2005) (pointing to the multiplicity of interpretations of the term “freedom from hunger,” even when limited to nutrition). 98. See infra Part V. 99. Robert S. McNam ara, President of the World Bank, Address Before the Board of Governors (Sept. 25, 1972), in THE MCNAMARA YEARS AT THE WORLD BANK: MAJOR POLICY ADDRESSES OF ROBERT S. MCNAMARA 1968-1981, at 228 (1981) (advocating th e paradigm to reconcile the “growth imperative” with social justice by giving “greater priority to establishing growth targets in terms of essential hum an needs”). The approach wa s originally advocated by the International Labour Organization. CYPHER & DIETZ, supra note 48, at 513. 100. Philip Alston, Ships Passing in the Night: The Curre nt State of the Human Rights and Development Debate Seen through the Lens of the Millennium Development Goals, 27 HUM. RTS Q. 755 (2005).