The Human Right to Health, Access to Patented Medicines, and the Restructuring of Global Innovation Policy

Author(s):  
Laurence R. Helfer ◽  
Graeme W. Austin
Author(s):  
Rosemary J. Jolly

The last decade has witnessed far greater attention to the social determinants of health in health research, but literary studies have yet to address, in a sustained way, how narratives addressing issues of health across postcolonial cultural divides depict the meeting – or non-meeting – of radically differing conceptualisations of wellness and disease. This chapter explores representations of illness in which Western narrators and notions of the body are juxtaposed with conceptualisations of health and wellness entirely foreign to them, embedded as the former are in assumptions about Cartesian duality and the superiority of scientific method – itself often conceived of as floating (mysteriously) free from its own processes of enculturation and their attendant limits. In this respect my work joins Volker Scheid’s, in this volume, in using the capacity of critical medical humanities to reassert the cultural specificity of what we have come to know as contemporary biomedicine, often assumed to be


Global Health ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 110-121
Author(s):  
Jonathan Wolff
Keyword(s):  

2020 ◽  
pp. 243-249

In parallel to the globalization of the modern world economy, the development of innovative policies for economic development is considered as a topical problem in a number of countries around the world. For developed countries, innovative economies have become one of the key preconditions for the country’s economic success. In Georgia, despite recent economic reforms, the country has not achieved tangible results in terms of innovation development. Hence the development of the economy needs to facilitate the formation of an innovative economy. Experience in developed countries shows that in a transformative economy the crucial role lies in the development of innovations and technological novelties. Accordingly, the article examines the contribution of innovation to the economic development of transformational countries. Priorities of innovation policy in Georgia have been identified, and the role of innovation in creating a competitive environment, increasing productivity and raising living standards has been assessed. The article uses the Global Innovation Index (GII) to assess the level of innovation in a country. There are discussed mechanisms that can help achieve long-term economic growth, productivity and job growth as well.


2018 ◽  
pp. 24-42
Author(s):  
MARÍA DALLI

In 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the first international text recognising universal human rights for all; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 25 recognises the right to an adequate standard of living, which includes the right to health and medical care. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Declaration, this article presents an overview of the main developments that have been made towards understanding the content and implications of the right to health, as well as an analysis of some specific advancements that aim to facilitate the enforcement thereof. These include: a) the implication of private entities as responsible for right to health obligations; b) the Universal Health Coverage goal, proposed by the World Health Organization and included as one of the Sustainable Development Goals; and c) the individual complaints mechanism introduced by the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (adopted on the 10th December 2008, 60 years after the UDHR).


2020 ◽  
pp. 36-58
Author(s):  
Nicole Hassoun

Some maintain that people lack a human right to health because this right cannot provide guidance for distributing scarce resources. Even if the skeptics are right on this point, the second chapter suggests that is not a reason to reject the right; the role of the human right to health is to provide a kind of hope that can foster the virtue of creative resolve. This resolve is a fundamental commitment to finding creative solutions to what appear to be tragic dilemmas. Rather than helping one decide how to ration scarce resources, the human right to health provides reason to find ways to fulfill everyone’s claims. The hope this right provides gives us a response to apparent tragedy in motivating us to search for ways of avoiding it—rather than an account of distributive justice.


2020 ◽  
pp. 13-35
Author(s):  
Nicole Hassoun

Living with untreated AIDS is devastating. Patients often suffer from terrible lesions, pneumonia, and nausea; become emaciated; have seizures; and eventually die. The first chapter argues that there should be an enforceable legal human right to health that includes a right to access essential medicines to treat diseases like AIDS. The chapter does not provide a complete account of the right’s basis; the right may also have to protect our basic equality and dignity, for instance. Nevertheless, it argues that health is necessary for, and partly constitutive of, a minimally good life. Lack of access to essential medicines characteristically undermines individuals’ ability to live such lives. So people should have a human right to health that grounds rights to access essential medicines.


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