Diritto alla salute e sperimentazioni sull'uomo: la "reasonable availability" dei farmaci nei paesi in via di sviluppo

Although the benefits to be derived from globalisation as a result of sharing ideas and cultures and of introducing new technologies are potentially enormous, the process generates the great concern that these benefits are not yet accessible for millions of poor people. Recent economic and political improvements in developing countries, especially in Africa and southern Asia, are threatened by the daunting spread of diseases. If they are considered in the light of a specific function of taming the excesses of the process of globalisation, human rights could be seen as the main vehicle for identifying and solving these inequalities in health treatment. This would make the accessibility of the right to health a very important topic and experiments with new vaccines all the more urgent. The aim of this paper is to describe the right to access to medicine as a goal of development. This in turn leads to a suitable re-interpretation of certain forecasts about human pharmaceutical experiments included in the international documents that govern them, with a special focus on two controversial aspects: the use of placebos and above all access to benefits received at the end of pharmaceutical trials by the entire population of the country where the research was carried out. The author maintains that the requirement of the reasonable availability of drugs should be interpreted and understood very restrictively as one though not the only necessary benefit of experimenting with human subjects. Rafael de Asís Roig,

Monica Errico, Diritto alla salute e sperimentazioni sull'uomo: la "reasonable availability" dei farmaci nei paesi in via di sviluppo in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO " 1/2007, pp 27-49, DOI: