“I want my leadership to be judged by the impact of our work on the health of two populations: women and the people of Africa.” This is how Dr. Margaret Chan, the current Director-General of the World Health Organization , described her leadership mission. The reason behind this mission is evident. Women and girls constitute 70% of the world’s poor and 80% of the world’s refugees. Gender violence against women aged 15–44 is responsible for more deaths and disability than cancer, (...) malaria, traffic accidents, and war. An estimated 350,000 to 500,000 women still die in childbirth every year. The negative health implications of absolute poverty are worst in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Hence, Chan aims to have the biggest impact on the world’s poorest people. (shrink)

This paper presents a reconstruction of and some constructive comments on Thomas Pogge’s conception of global justice. Using Imre Lakatos’s notion of a research program, the paper identifies Pogge’s “hard core” and “protective belt” claims regarding the scope of fundamental principles of justice, the object and structure of duties of global justice, the explanation of world poverty, and the appropriate reforms to the existing global order. The paper recommends some amendments to Pogge’s program in each of the four areas.

This paper focuses on the ethical justifiability of patents on Genetically Modified (GM) crops. I argue that there are three distinguishing features of GM crops that make it unethical to grant patents on GM crops, even if we assume that the patent system is in general justified. The first half of the paper critiques David Resnik’s recent arguments in favor of patents on GM crops. Resnik argues that we should take a consequentialist approach to the issue, and that the best (...) way to do so is to apply the Precautionary Principle, and that the Precautionary Principle, in this case, supports patents on GM crops. I argue that his argument in favor of a consequentialist treatment is invalid; his Precautionary Principle in any case appears to be incompatible with consequentialism; and his conception of reasonable precautions is too ill-defined to have any argumentative purchase. In the second half of the paper, I argue against GM crop patents, on three grounds. First, there is insufficient evidence to say whether allowing patents on GM crops will make research go faster than not having patents, whilst there is a good reason to think that, other things being equal, a society that allows patents on GM crops will be less just than one that does not. Second, even assuming that patents on GM crops will increase the pace of GM crop research, there is no social need to do so. Third, patents on GM crops will frequently have ethically unacceptable side effects. (shrink)

Neglected and tropical diseases, pervasive in developing countries, are important contributors to global health inequalities. They remain largely untreated due to lack of effective and affordable treatments. Resource-poor countries cannot afford to develop the public health interventions needed to control neglected diseases. In addition, neglected diseases do not represent an attractive market for pharmaceutical industry. Although a number of international commitments, stated in the Millennium Development Goals, have been made to avert the risk of communicable diseases, tropical diseases still remain (...) neglected due to delays in international assistance. This delay can be explained by the form international cooperation has generally taken, which is limited to promoting countries’ national interests, rather than social justice at a global level. This restricts the international responsibility for global inequalities in health to a humanitarian assistance. We propose an alternative view, arguing that expanding the scope of international cooperation by promoting shared health and economic value at a global level will create new opportunities for innovative, effective and affordable interventions worldwide. It will also promote neglected diseases as a global research priority. We build our argument on a proposal to replace the patenting system that currently regulates pharmaceutical research with a global fund to reward this research based on actual decreases in morbidity and mortality at a global level. We argue that this approach is beneficent because it will decrease global health inequalities and promote social justice worldwide. (shrink)

Dying before one’s time has been a prominent theme in classic literature and poetry. Catherine Linton’s youthful death in Wuthering Heights leaves behind a bereft Heathcliff and generations of mourning readers. The author herself, Emily Brontë, died young from tuberculosis. John Keats’ Ode on Melancholy captures the transitory beauty of 19th century human lives too often ravished by early death. Keats also died of tuberculosis, aged 25. “The bloom, whose petals nipped before they blew, died on the promise of the (...) fruit” is how Percy Bysshe Shelley expressed his grief over Keats’ death. Emily Dickinson wrote So Has a Daisy Vanished, being driven into depression by the early loss of loved ones from typhoid and tuberculosis. (shrink)

This article examines recent controversies over the relationship between human rights and intellectual property rights (IPRs). Many activists have claimed that IPRs conflict with human rights. Others have argued that IPRs are themselves human rights. The article approaches the debate as an opportunity to clarify the nature of IPRs in relation to human rights, as well as the nature of contemporary struggles over these rights. After surveying the dual expansion of both human rights and IPRs and rejecting the view that (...) IPRs are rooted in human rights, the author investigates the example of the HIV/AIDS crisis and the global Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines in order to illustrate attempts to represent IPRs as an outright threat to human rights. Highlighting the limitations of a human rights-based critique of IPRs, he concludes by proposing to study contemporary conflicts over IPRs and human rights as struggles for recognition and as struggles over the institutionalization of a transnational “recognition order.”. (shrink)

Dr Devi Sridhar, Department of Politics and International relations, University of Oxford, All Souls College, High St, OX1 4AL UK, Email: devi.sridhar{at}politics.ox.ac.uk ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract This paper discusses the politics of access to essential medicines and identifies ‘space’ in the current system where health concerns can be strengthened relative to trade. This issue is addressed from a global governance perspective focusing on the main actors who can have the greatest impact. These include (...) developing country coalitions and citizens in developed countries though participation in civil society organisations. These actors have combined forces to tackle this issue successfully, resulting in the 2001 Doha Declaration on Public Health. The collaboration has been so powerful due to the assistance of the media as well as the decision to compromise with pharmaceutical companies and their host countries. To improve access to essential medicines, six C's are needed: coalitions, civil society, citizenship, compromise, communication and collaboration. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Given current constraints on universal treatment campaigns, recent advances in public health prevention initiatives have revitalized efforts to stem the tide of HIV transmission. Yet, despite a growing imperative for prevention—supported by the promise of behavioral, structural and biomedical approaches to lower the incidence of HIV—human rights frameworks remain limited in addressing collective prevention policy through global health governance. Assessing the evolution of rights-based approaches to global HIV/AIDS policy, this review finds that human rights have shifted from collective public health (...) to individual treatment access. While the advent of the HIV/AIDS pandemic gave meaning to rights in framing global health policy, the application of rights in treatment access litigation came at the expense of public health prevention efforts. Where the human rights framework remains limited to individual rights enforced against a state duty bearer, such rights have faced constrained application in framing population-level policy to realize the public good of HIV prevention. Concluding that human rights frameworks must be developed to reflect the complementarity of individual treatment and collective prevention, this article conceptualizes collective rights to public health, structuring collective combination prevention to alleviate limitations on individual rights frameworks and frame rights-based global HIV/AIDS policy to assure research expansion, prevention access and health system integration. (shrink)

This article critically examines current responses to multi-drug resistant tuberculosis and argues that bioethics needs to be willing to engage in a more radical critique of the problem than is currently offered. In particular, we need to focus not simply on market-driven models of innovation and anti-microbial solutions to emergent and re-emergent infections such as TB. The global community also needs to address poverty and the structural factors that entrench inequalities—thus moving beyond the orthodox medical/public health frame of reference.