Abstract
This paper offers a few elements of an answer to the question to what extent drug patents can be morally justified. Justifications based on natural rights, distributive justice and utilitarian arguments are discussed and criticized. The author recognizes the potential of the patents to benefit society but argues that the system is currently evolving in the wrong direction, particularly in the field of drugs. More than a third of the world’s population has no access to essential drugs. The working of the patent system is an important determinant of access to drugs. This paper argues that drug patents are not easily justified and that the ‘architecture’ of the patent system should be rethought in view of its mission of benefiting society.
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See art. 28 TRIPs.
See art. 27(1) TRIPs: “... patents [can] be granted for any inventions, whether products or processes, in all fields of technology ... [and] patent rights are enjoyable without discrimination as to the place of invention, the field of technology and whether products are imported or locally produced”. (emphasis added)
The outcome of the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Doha (Qatar) in November 2001. WT/MIN(01)/DEC/2, 20 November 2001.
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The famous libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick, who has formulated a theory of property that is partly based on Locke’s theory, has raised the following pertinent question: why isn’t mixing what I own with what I don’t own a way of losing what I own rather than a way of gaining what I don’t? He gives the example of spilling a can of tomato juice in the sea: “If I own a can of tomato juice and spill it in the sea so that its molecules (made radioactive, so I can check this) mingle evenly throughout the sea, do I thereby come to own the sea, or have I foolishly dissipated my tomato juice?” Nozick, R. (1974) Anarchy, State and Utopia. Blackwell, Oxford: 175.
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See Fortune 500. Fortune Magazine 2002; April. In 2001, the profits of America’s 10 largest pharmaceutical companies went up by 33% — from 28 to 37.3 billion dollars! — despite the bad economic situation. Profits are also growing much faster than the volume of R&D investments. According to the 2001 Fortune 500 ranking, the pharmaceutical industry was the most profitable industry for the tenth time in a row.
Cf. the results of a survey which the umbrella organization of the American pharmaceutical industry (PhRMA) held among its members. See New Medicines in Development, available on www.phrma.org.
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See a recent interview with Dr. Jim Yong Kim, a doctor and medical anthropologist and co-founder of Partners in Health, a Boston-based (USA) organisation co-operating with poor communities in Boston, Haiti, Peru and Russia. Cf. Persistent Plagues, Persistent Paradigms & the Responsibility of Physicians in the HIV Epidemic: An Interview with Dr. Jim Kim by Faiz Ahmad, 8 November 2002, available on http://www.zmag.org.
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The author is a part-time Senior Research Fellow of the Fund for Scientific Research, Department of Philosophy and Moral Science, Ghent University (Belgium) and a part-time Professor, Department of General Economics, University of Antwerp (Belgium).
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Sterckx, S. Can drug patents be morally justified?. SCI ENG ETHICS 11, 81–92 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-005-0059-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-005-0059-3