Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
important step towards eliminating exploitation in scientific research, which has been
rightly criticized by developing countries for decades. It is a step which demonstrates -
like the global (apart from the US) adoption of the CBD - a willingness to negotiate
international agreements based on considerations of justice. Yet a lot more needs to
be done, in particular improving the current system of providing incentives to phar-
maceutical research, which, as the World Medical Association and the World Health
Organization have noted, fails to deliver on the health needs of developing countries.
In this chapter, we have introduced one possible reform of the international intel-
lectual property rights system: the Health Impact Fund. Clearly, a single reform plan
on its own cannot achieve the ambitious goal of providing health care to all, globally.
However, it is important to examine such broad, ambitious reform plans in the con-
text of discussions on benefit sharing because, in an ideal situation, the full realization
of the human right to health could make benefit sharing redundant. As is currently
the case in affluent countries, patients and healthy volunteers could promote scientific
progress by donating their samples freely in return for a functioning health care sys-
tem that gives everyone access to medicines, health care personnel and education. To
impose post-study obligations in such circumstances would unnecessarily burden the
research enterprise in a setting where the fruits of science are available to all.
On the other hand, it is important to remember, while considering reform plans,
that this ideal scenario is currently no more than a distant aspiration, and that ben-
efit sharing is, at least for now, here to stay as an essential mechanism that helps
avoid the most blatant exploitation in scientific research in developing countries.
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