HUMAN RIGHTS AND GLOBAL HEALTH: A RESEARCH PROGRAM

TLDR

One‑third of all human lives end prematurely from poverty‑related causes, many of which could be avoided by global institutional reforms that eradicate extreme poverty and by health‑system reforms that make medical knowledge freely available as a global public good. The study proposes redesigning drug‑development rules so that rewards are proportional to a drug’s impact on global disease burden rather than monopoly rents. The proposed reform would lower drug prices worldwide to near marginal cost and stimulate research into neglected diseases concentrated among the poor. The feasibility of the reform demonstrates that the current medical‑patent regime is severely unjust and constitutes a human‑rights violation due to the avoidable mortality and morbidity it causes.

Abstract

Abstract: One‐third of all human lives end in early death from poverty‐related causes. Most of these premature deaths are avoidable through global institutional reforms that would eradicate extreme poverty. Many are also avoidable through global health‐system reform that would make medical knowledge freely available as a global public good. The rules should be redesigned so that the development of any new drug is rewarded in proportion to its impact on the global disease burden (not through monopoly rents). This reform would bring drug prices down worldwide close to their marginal cost of production and would powerfully stimulate pharmaceutical research into currently neglected diseases concentrated among the poor. Its feasibility shows that the existing medical‐patent regime (trade‐related aspects of intellectual property rights—TRIPS—as supplemented by bilateral agreements) is severely unjust—and its imposition a human‐rights violation on account of the avoidable mortality and morbidity it foreseeably produces.