Comparative Program on Health Society, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, ON, Canada.
Health Hum Rights. 2008;10(2):37-52.
This paper explores the legal and normativepotential of the right to health to mitigate the restrictive impact of trade-related intellectual property rules on access to medicines, as evidenced by the global outcomes of the seminal pharmaceutical company litigation in South Africa in 2001. I argue that the litigation and resulting public furor provoked a paradigm shift in global approaches to AIDS treatment in sub-Saharan Africa. I argue further that this outcome illustrates how human rights in concert with social action were able to effectively challenge dominant claims about the necessity of stringent trade-related intellectual property rights in poor countries, and ergo, to raise the priority of public health needs in related decision-making. I explore the causal role of rights in achieving these outcomes through the analytical lens provided by international legal compliance theories, and in particular, the model of normative emergence proposed by Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink. I suggest that the AIDS medicines experience offers strategic guidance for realizing the right to health's transformative potential with regard to essential medicines more generally.
本文探讨了健康权在减轻与贸易有关的知识产权规则对获取药品的限制影响方面的法律和规范潜力，这一点可以从 2001 年南非制药公司诉讼的全球结果中得到证明。我认为，这场诉讼以及由此引发的公众强烈反对，引发了撒哈拉以南非洲地区全球艾滋病治疗方法的范式转变。我进一步认为，这一结果表明，人权与社会行动如何能够有效地挑战关于在贫穷国家严格执行与贸易有关的知识产权的主导主张，从而提高相关决策中公共卫生需求的优先级。我通过国际法律合规理论提供的分析视角，特别是玛莎·芬尼莫尔和凯瑟琳·西克金提出的规范性出现模式，探讨了权利在实现这些结果方面的因果作用。我认为，艾滋病药品经验为更广泛地实现基本药物方面的健康权变革潜力提供了战略指导。
