Thomas Pogge
Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale
speaks on
“The Health Impact Fund: enhancing justice and efficiency in global health”
Wednesday, 21 May 2014
6:30 to 8:00 PM
6:30 PM: drinks/networking
7:00 PM: talk by Thomas Pogge
The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
16 Bedford Square
London WC1B 3JA
About the Speaker, Thomas Pogge:
Thomas Pogge is the Director of the Global Justice Program and the Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University. Having received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard, Thomas Pogge has published widely on Kant and in moral and political philosophy, including various books on Rawls and global justice. In addition to his Yale appointment, he is the Research Director of the Centre for the Study of the Mind in Nature at the University of Oslo and a Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics.
Pogge is also editor for social and political philosophy for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science. With support from the Australian Research Council, the UK-based BUPA Foundation and the European Commission (7th Framework) he currently heads a team effort towards developing a complement to the pharmaceutical patent regime that would improve access to advanced medicines for the poor worldwide (http://www.healthimpactfund.org) and toward developing better indices of poverty and gender equity.
For more information on Thomas Pogge, please go to: http://www.yale.edu/macmillan/globaljustice/pogge.html
About the Organisation, The Global Justice Program:
Launched in 2008 by Thomas Pogge, Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs, the Global Justice Program unites an interdisciplinary group of scholars with the aim of taking morality seriously in shaping foreign policy and in negotiating transnational institutional arrangements. The program has a special interest in the evolution of severe poverty and its relationship with public health. The program is based at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University.
The concept of global justice acknowledges the deep interconnections of a globalized world, and traces individual deprivations back to political and economic structures. It allows us to view events as effects of how our social world is structured and organized — of our laws and conventions, practices and social institutions. To learn more, see Thomas Pogge’s lecture, “What Is Global Justice?”
The program supports the work of the Global Justice Fellows and their projects, including the Health Impact Fund and Academics Stand Against Poverty.
About the talk:
At least a third of all human beings die prematurely from causes that access to better medical treatment could avert. One culprit is the existing regime for rewarding pharmaceutical innovations. It provides incentives for the development and distribution of new medicines; but it also excludes poor people from their benefits.
The Health Impact Fund is a complementary mechanism intended to fill the gaps left by the current regime. It would give pharmaceutical innovators the option to be rewarded according to the incremental health impact of their product rather than through patent-protected mark-ups. The HIF would stimulate the development of high-impact medicines, especially for currently neglected diseases, would ensure that such products are available everywhere at no more than the lowest feasible cost of manufacture and distribution, and would encourage innovators to market such medicines with the aim of reducing the global disease burden in the most cost-effective way. This presentation will (a) introduce the HIF proposal and the moral reasons in its favor, (b) discuss its implementation, funding, and economic viability, (c) explain its advantages for pharmaceutical firms and for poor and affluent populations, and (d) report on efforts to pilot the HIF idea in India with an important new medicine.
For a taster, see http://www.ted.com/speakers/thomas_pogge.html
http://www.yale.org.uk/calendarofevents?eventId=852482&EventViewMode=EventDetails
