“It’s not about gestures. It’s not about feeling good. It’s not about charities. It’s about a clear focus. It’s about demanding human rights,” emphasized James Orbinski, associate professor of medicine at U of T, and a vocal advocate for universal access to medicine.
Under the terms of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document adopted 50 years ago by the United Nations, access to medical care is considered a basic human right. Despite these lofty words, 80 per cent of the 35 million people who die annually of chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension, and epilepsy, die because they lack access to drugs.
Academics, scientists, doctors, lawyers, and students gathered at the Munk Centre for International Studies on October 18 for a day-long conference addressing the issues of access to medicine and corporate social responsibility.
According to Thomas Pogge, the keynote speaker and a political scientist at Columbia University, the world’s rich have a responsibility to its poor.
Pogge opened the conference with two questions. First, what would you be willing to spend to save the life of a stranger? Secondly, what would you charge to kill a stranger? The first is an example of a positive duty, that to help others in need. The second question reflects a negative duty, the responsibility not to harm others when choosing not participate in an action.
Pogge proposed that drug companies should have the option of voluntarily registering new drugs and drug-related processes under a type of patent that would result in the discovery becoming public knowledge. Generic drug companies would then be able to produce the same drugs at a lower price, often because they do not have to invest money in research and development, nor prove the safety of the product.
The cost of producing a brand-name drug is a staggering $800 million, almost 75 per cent of which is attributable to marketing costs. If corporations hinder access to medicine by preventing the production of cheaper drugs, they are guilty of neglecting their negative duty to not inflict harm, said Pogge.
Today, drug companies with patents have a 20-year monopoly on a drug or process, but agreements between countries tend to extend this period. Generic companies must wait for these patents to run out before cheaper, more accessible drugs can be made.
Pogge suggested that the drug companies could be rewarded in other ways than direct profit, perhaps through a public tax that is proportional to the Global Domestic Product of their country.
“If the political will can be mustered, we could very easily work out the technical details,” he said.
However, Orbinski, a former president of Doctors without Borders, pointed out that seeking the convergence of market and society is a false quest. The corporation is a “self-interested actor whose only motivation is profit,” he maintained. “The right to health is not a global reality. It must emerge out of an activist struggle.”
Among the world-renowned academics in the Munk Centre’s luxurious conference room, poverty seemed more like an abstract idea than the concrete force that it is. The reality of poverty has little time for the fight for human rights. Those who do have the time and luxury must do so.
