The Pharmaceutical Commons

Sharing and Exclusion in Global Health Drug Development

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5337565
AutoresJavier Lezaun (0000-0002-5483-3628, University of Oxford), Catherine M Montgomery (0000-0002-5829-6137, Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Volumen40
Número1
Páginas3-29
Fecha de publicación2015-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0162243914542349
PMID25866425
PMCIDPMC4361701
OpenAlexW2101589578
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas42
Referencias citadas43

In the last decade, the organization of pharmaceutical research on neglected tropical diseases has undergone transformative change. In a context of perceived "market failure," the development of new medicines is increasingly handled by public-private partnerships. This shift toward hybrid organizational models depends on a particular form of exchange: the sharing of proprietary assets in general and of intellectual property rights in particular. This article explores the paradoxical role of private property in this new configuration of global health research and development. Rather than a tool to block potential competitors, proprietary assets function as a lever to attract others into risky collaborative ventures; instead of demarcating public and private domains, the sharing of property rights is used to increase the porosity of that boundary. This reimagination of the value of property is connected to the peculiar timescape of global health drug development, a promissory orientation to the future that takes its clearest form in the centrality of "virtual" business models and the proliferation of strategies of deferral. Drawing on the anthropological literature on inalienable possessions, we reconsider property's traditional exclusionary role and discuss the possibility that the new pharmaceutical "commons" proclaimed by contemporary global health partnerships might be the precursor of future enclosures

Business · Commons · Economics · Global commons · Intellectual property · Law and economics · Political science · Public relations · Biotechnology and Related Fields · Intellectual Property and Patents · Law · Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy