Professor Thomas Pogge, Professorial Fellow, Centre for Applied Philosophy, LPO Box 8260, Canberra. Tel.: +61 261255485; Email: tp6{at}columbia.edu ' + u + '@' + d + ' '//--> Abstract I would pay three million to go into space, says the banker to his attorney. — I wouldn't go if you paid me, the latter laughs, for me the French Riviera is quite exciting enough. Ah, I would pay a million for an extra year of life , the elderly tourist effusively (...) tells his lover. — We have never had even a hundred dollars , the Cambodian teenager replies, we are a large family. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The TRIPS agreement has been widely discussed. Critics have accused it to favour property rights at the cost of public health in AIDS-stricken development countries. In this article, the conflict between on the one hand Intellectual Property Rights and on the other a right to subsistence is analysed with the help of a method for specification. The rationalization of TRIPS and its amendments raises two questions for ethics, one normative and one meta-ethical. First, which right has priority: the right to (...) property or the right to subsistence? Second, how can conflicting rights be reconciled in a coherent ethical system. The aim of the article is to answer these two questions and in order to do that the method of specification developed by the philosopher Henry Richardson is applied. The result is a specified norm applicable for this kind of rights conflicts. (shrink)