Editors' Preface: Incentives for Global Public Health

As explained in the Series Editors' Preface, this series is a result of workshops bringing together public and international lawyers. From this second volume onwards, the topics revolve around the International Alliance of Research Universities' (‘IARU’) thematic research topics. When Kim Rubenstein began thinking about organizing the second workshop around the theme of health, she was encouraged to contact her ANU colleague Thomas Pogge in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. Thomas responded enthusiastically and work began to brainstorm the call for papers. This second workshop was entitled: ‘Incentives for Global Public Health: Patent Law and Access to Essential Medicines.’ This title is inspired by Professor Pogge's research programme, which explores institutional mechanisms that would create additional incentives to develop essential medicines while also ensuring real access to the resulting new products even for the world's poorest populations. This topic provides excellent material for the themes the series is meant to explore. A majority of human beings are endangered by serious diseases for which advanced medicines are either not being developed at all or are inaccessible to them. To explain this huge healthcare deficit, we must study the relevant parts of international and public law together and examine their interplay. To judge these national and international rules – and those who formulate, promulgate and enforce them – we need to relate these rules to internationally recognized human rights and ask, for example, whether it is not a violation of human rights legally to prevent generic manufacturers from supplying essential medicines cheaply to poor patients.