Life, Death, and Property Rights Summary

Life, Death, and Property Rights Summary

Debora Spar’s and Nicholas Bartlett’s case “Life, Death, and Property Rights: The Pharmaceutical Industry Faces AIDS in Africa” deals with the ongoing debate between the intellectual property rights on medicine and the concern for social welfare. The argument is split between one side arguing for the importance of human health over profit and the other lobbying for the protection of patents that aid in research and development. The case gives the reader a background on the emergence of the AIDS and HIV virus near the end of the twentieth century, the history of the patent system and its effect on the pharmaceutical community in the last eighty years, and how those two have created an international debate in which both sides have incredible support. The two authors remain unbiased throughout the case. They produce facts and arguments from both sides of the dilemma. They start this case with the central problem the AIDS and HIV virus.

Spar and Bartlett first discuss the emergence of AIDS in the United States. They talk of the first wave that hit New York and San Francisco during the early 1980’s. There is reference to the alarming rate in which the virus was able to spread. They noted that 100,000 people tested positive in the first eight years of testing and that same number was matched only two years later. The death rate was very high and patients almost never lived more than 10 years. The virus was not isolated to the United States however. Spar and Bartlett write that in 1983, 33 countries reported infections and four years later, there were 127 countries reporting infections. Through various groups and government programs AIDS education greatly increased in the 1990’s. The number of new cases in the US was dropping. The introduction of the first AIDS- specific drug, AZT was introduced in 1986. Through new forms of