Just Rules for Innovative Pharmaceuticals

Philosophies 7 (4):79 (2022)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Globalized in 1995 through the TRIPs Agreement, humanity’s dominant mechanism for encouraging innovations involves 20-year product patents, whose monopoly features enable innovators to reap large markups or licensing fees from early users. Exclusive reliance on this reward mechanism in the pharmaceutical sector is morally problematic for two main reasons. First, it imposes a great burden on poor people who cannot afford to buy patented treatments at monopoly prices and whose specific health problems are therefore neglected by pharmacological research. Second, it discourages pharmaceutical firms from fighting diseases at the population level with the aim of slashing their incidence. These problems can be alleviated by establishing a supplementary alternative reward mechanism that would enable pharmaceutical innovators to exchange their monopoly privileges on a patented product for impact rewards based on the actual health gains achieved with this product. As such, an international Health Impact Fund would create powerful new incentives to rapidly develop remedies against diseases concentrated among the poor, provide such remedies with ample care at very low prices, and deploy them strategically to contain, suppress, and ideally eradicate the target disease. By promoting innovations and their diffusion together, the HIF would greatly enlarge the benefits, and thereby also the cost-effectiveness, of the pharmaceutical sector, especially in favor of the world’s poor.

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

The Role of Rules.Ota Weinberger - 1988 - Ratio Juris 1 (3):224-240.
The Ethics of Information-Gathering in Innovative Practice.Jake Earl & David Wendler - 2020 - Internal Medicine Journal 50 (12):1583-1587.

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-07-14

Downloads
23 (#584,438)

6 months
7 (#175,814)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Thomas W. Pogge
Yale University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Leave no one behind.William R. Rubel - 2004 - Journal of Military Ethics 3 (3):252-256.

Add more references