Access to High Cost Cancer Medicines Through the Lens of an Australian Senate Inquiry—Defining the “Goods” at Stake

Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 14 (3):401-410 (2017)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Cancer is a major burden on populations and health systems internationally. The development of innovative cancer medicines is seen as a significant part of the solution. These new cancer medicines are, however, expensive, leading to limited or delayed access and disagreements among stakeholders about which medicines to fund. There is no obvious resolution to these disagreements, with stakeholders holding firmly to divergent positions. Access to cancer medicines was recently explored in Australia in a Senate Inquiry into the Availability of New, Innovative, and Specialist Cancer Drugs in Australia. We analysed the resultant Senate Report to identify competing stakeholder values. Our analysis illustrates that there are four main “goods” prioritized by different stakeholders: 1) innovation, 2) compassion, 3) equity, and 4) sustainability. We observe that, with the exception of sustainability, all of these “goods” put pressure on payers to provide access to cancer medicines more quickly and based on less rigorous evaluation processes. We then explore the consequences of giving in to such pressure and suggest that deconstructing the implicit values in calls for “enhanced access” to cancer medicines is necessary so that more nuanced solutions to the challenge of providing access to these high cost medicines can be found.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Supply of medicines: paternalism, autonomy and reality.D. Prayle & M. Brazier - 1998 - Journal of Medical Ethics 24 (2):93-98.
Introduction: Access to Life-Saving Medicines and Intellectual Property Rights.Doris Schroeder - 2011 - Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 20 (2):277-278.
Bodies of Rights and Therapeutic Markets.João Biehl & Adriana Petryna - 2011 - Social Research: An International Quarterly 78 (4):359-386.
Poverty, Disease, and Medicines in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.Klaus M. Leisinger - 2012 - Business and Professional Ethics Journal 31 (1):135-185.
GlaxoSmithKline and Access to Essential Medicines (B).N. Craig Smith & Anne Duncan - 2005 - Journal of Business Ethics Education 2 (1):123-132.
Bodies of rights and therapeutic markets.João Biehl & Adriana Petryna - 2011 - Social Research: An International Quarterly 78 (2):359-386.
Corporate Responsibilities for Access to Medicines.Klaus M. Leisinger - 2009 - Journal of Business Ethics 85 (S1):3 - 23.
Patent Funded Access to Medicines.Tom Andreassen - 2014 - Developing World Bioethics 15 (3):152-161.

Analytics

Added to PP
2017-07-19

Downloads
29 (#474,441)

6 months
1 (#1,040,386)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?