Human colonization of the planet Mars is not a question of “if” but rather of “when,” or “how soon?” The challenges ahead are immense but so too are the perceived benefits. This article addresses an aspect that, thus far, has been largely unexamined: the interaction between intellectual property laws on Earth and the mammoth Mars …
Society has long enjoyed the benefits of medical advances. In numerous cases, the biotechnology and pharmaceutical (biopharmaceutical) industries build on knowledge accumulated over centuries by traditional communities. As in the case of aspirin and morphine, the use of this knowledge has reduced the time and cost it takes to develop new drugs. Despite the community’s …
This Article reconsiders the drugs-for-the-developing world debate that has taken place in the shadow of free trade liberalization. For the last twenty years, this debate has centered on a supposedly zero-sum conflict between access to drugs for residents of the “third world” and incentives for pharmaceutical multinationals to invest in research and development. Underlying this …
