Vol. 1 No. 2 (2017)
Regular articles

Access to medicines and pharmaceutical patents: civil society struggle for the right to health, facing the transnational pharmaceutical corporations

Pedro Villardi
Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro | Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro - Brasil
Bio
Felipe Fonseca
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro | Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro - Brasil
Bio

Published 2017-07-31

Keywords

  • Access to medicines,
  • Pharmaceutical patents,
  • Transnational corporations,
  • Right to health

How to Cite

Villardi, P., & Fonseca, F. (2017). Access to medicines and pharmaceutical patents: civil society struggle for the right to health, facing the transnational pharmaceutical corporations. Homa Publica - Revista Internacional De Derechos Humanos Y Empresas, 1(2), e:018. Retrieved from https://periodicos.ufjf.br/index.php/HOMA/article/view/30544

Abstract

Access to medicines and pharmaceutical patents have been the subject of debate, especially since the creation of the WTO and the TRIPS Agreement in the early 1990s. In a strategic alliance, developed countries and corporations have articulated the obligation to have patents for medicines. They argued that there would be no further medical innovations without monopoly incentive, to recover investments. However, two decades later, there is plenty of data proving how fallacious this argument was/is. In this article, we will present the impacts of pharmaceutical patents on access to medicines and medical innovation and we will argue that only with a systemic confrontation with corporate power it is possible guarantee access to medicines and pharmaceutical innovation based on health needs.

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