Access to Essential Medicines as a Human Right: History

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.


Author(s):  
Fran Quigley

Millions of people around the world face a real problem: their desperate need for affordable medicines clashes with the core business model of the powerful pharmaceutical industry. In response, patients and activists are aiming to make all essential medicines affordable by reclaiming medicines as a public good and a human right, instead of a profit-making commodity. Their challenge is made more daunting by the perceived complexity of the issues surrounding access to essential medicines. “The problem we have is that there are only a handful of people in the world who know what we are taking about,” one leading medicine activist admits. It doesn’t have to be this way. A Prescription for Change diagnoses our medicines problem and prescribes the cure: it delivers a clear and convincing argument for a complete shift in the global and U.S. approach to developing and providing essential medicines—and a primer on how to make that change happen.


2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Forman

In perpetuating and exacerbating restricted access to essential medicines, current trade-related intellectual property rules on medicines may violate core human rights to health and medicines. In this light, their impact on the global disease burden raises serious questions about their necessity, and their justification should be critically assessed from the perspective of human rights standards. These standards require that international trade rules on medicines be justified to the fullest extent possible, and permitted only to the extent to which they can be justified. In this article I explore the impact of trade rules on medicines access, and the growing force of the human right to health. I argue that the limited justification for strong patents in poor countries suggests the need for significant reform of trade-related intellectual property rights. I argue further that human rights standards may offer both normative and practical tools for achieving this reform and for challenging trade rules on medicines at various levels.


Author(s):  
Jonathan CHAN

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.於 2005 年9 月30 日至10 月2 日期間,在加拿大蒙特利爾(Montréal) 一個討論人權及基本藥物獲取的研討會上,與會者草擬了一份名為〈蒙特利爾獲取基本藥物的人權宣言〉 (以下簡稱〈宣言〉)。該〈宣言〉主要是針對貧窮國家的人民無法獲得基本藥物去治療一些普通的疾病,而備受痛苦煎熬的狀況,並指出“我們有責任去達成一種社會的和國際的秩序,在這種秩序中的人權,包括取得基本藥物的權利,是獲得充分實現的。這項責任必須在制度和政制策劃上確認及體現出來。在個別國家及全球層面上,那些政策、規則和制度必須促使‘取得基本藥物’這一權利得以實現。”本文並不反對為貧國人民爭取合理的待遇,本文所要探討的是〈宣言〉把社會及國際秩序奠基在人權 (包括取得基本藥物的權利) 是否有充分的理論根據這一問題。本文的基本論旨是:人權倘若被理解為一種自由主義式的自然權利,那麼人權就並非人類的共同道德的核心。本文通過泰勒 (Charles Taylor) 稱之為“原子論 ”(Atomism) 的一種社會哲學觀點來說明自由主義式的自然權利的性質,並由此而證成上述論旨。如此一來,〈宣言〉把社會及國際秩序奠基在人權(包括取得基本藥物的權利)是否有充分的理論根據就不無疑問。An international workshop entitled Human Rights and Access to Essential Medicines: The Way Forward was held from September 30 to October 2, 2005 in Montréal, Canada. At the conclusion of the workshop, the participants drafted the Montréal Statement on the Human Right to Essential Medicines, which was reprinted in a paper written by Thomas Pogge. Article 3 of the statement claims that we have a responsibility to achieve a social and international order in which human rights—including the right to essential medicines—are fully realized and that this obligation must be recognized and reflected in the design of institutions and policies. I examine that claim in this essay, and argue that if the concept of rights is understood as liberal rights, then the claim is dubious. Liberal rights imply an individualistic moral perspective that not all moral traditions endorse, including Daoism. This will be shown by analyzing the nature of liberal rights in terms of atomism, the philosophical doctrine that Charles Taylor uses to characterize liberal thought.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 234 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.


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