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Access to AIDS medicine
Swartz, Omar
Swartz, Omar
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july-sep_2004.pdf
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Abstract
"Despite this conceptualisation of property, ideas easily can be considered a 'public good' in the sense that sharing an idea is relatively costless and can be as easy as exchanging a sheet of paper. Ideas do not easily exhaust themselves with use; more is always better. Rather than having one drug company in Switzerland or in the United States producing AIDS medication, as we do under our contemporary property model, we could have factories throughout the world producing medicines that are patented by companies in the wealthy industrialised nations. Such regional manufacturing would be particularly effective in places such as Africa, Asia and India, which are hardest hit by AIDS and where locally produced medicines could be distributed easily to the people who need it, particularly to those who live in tribal or village communities that ordinarily lack access to western-produced goods. If 50 or 100 factories throughout the world were to produce the medicine, as opposed to two, the nature and effectiveness of the medicine would remain unaltered. What would change, however, is profitability. As private social goods become public, the ability of individuals to gorge themselves on public misfortune (or collective inaction) is lessened." (pg 3)
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2004-07
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With permission of the license/copyright holder