Moral disengagement and the motivational gap in climate change

Although climate change jeopardizes the fundamental human rights of current as well as future people, current actions and ambitions to tackle it are inadequate. There are two prominent explanations for this motivational gap in the climate ethics literature. The first maintains that our conventional moral judgement system is not well equipped to identify a complex problem such as climate change as an important moral problem. The second explanation refers to people’s reluctance to change their behaviour and the temptation to shirk responsibility. We argue that both factors are at play in the motivational gap and that they are complemented by crucial moral psychological insights regarding moral disengagement, which enables emitters to dissociate self-condemnation from harmful conduct. In this way, emitters are able to maintain their profligate, consumptive lifestyle, even though this conflicts with their moral standards with respect to climate change. We provide some illustrations of how strategies of moral disengagement are deployed in climate change and discuss the relationship between the explanations for the motivational gap and moral disengagement. On the basis of this explanatory framework, we submit that there are three pathways to tackle the motivational gap and moral disengagement in climate change: making climate change more salient to emitters and affirming their self-efficacy; reconsidering the self-interested motives that necessitate moral disengagement; and tackling moral disengagement directly

Globalization and responsibility for human rights

In this article, we examine to what extent globalization has altered responsibilities for human rights. We give priority to negative human rights and take the violation of these rights as the baseline for determining harm and injustice. We will focus on the global economic order and on climate change and examine whether these aspects of globalization provide us with new reasons to value our relationships with distant others. We argue that, if a relationship of harm is established, fulfilling positive duties is no longer a matter of general charity but has become a special obligation of justice. Accordingly, human rights and corresponding obligations gain important normative weight. We propose to use the "vulnerability presumption principle" as a guideline in determining whether or not such a relationship of harm is established

The concept of justifiable healthcare and how big data can help us to achieve it

Over the last decades, the face of health care has changed dramatically, with big improvements in what is technically feasible. However, there are indicators that the current approach to evaluating evidence in health care is not holistic and hence in the long run, health care will not be sustainable. New conceptual and normative frameworks for the evaluation of health care need to be developed and investigated. The current paper presents a novel framework of justifiable health care and explores how the use of artificial intelligence and big data can contribute to achieving the goals of this framework

Mandating data exclusivity for pharmaceuticals through international agreements : a fair idea?

Data exclusivity is temporary exclusive user right on the clinical data that need to be submitted to the regulatory authorities to prove that a new drug is safe and effective. For the pharmaceutical industry, data exclusivity is an important addition to the patent system, as data exclusivity will de facto delay the market entry of generic drugs until after the exclusive user rights on the clinical data have expired. In order to assess the normative legitimacy of the industry’s demand to include minimum standards for data exclusivity in international agreements, this contribution evaluates the three justifications that have frequently been advanced, depicting data exclusivity as (1) an essential policy tool to promote innovation; (2) a mechanism to prevent the generic industry from ‘free-riding’; and (3) a legal instrument to protect the industry’s property rights in clinical data

Eli Lilly v Canada : the uncomfortable liaison between intellectual property and international investment law

In 2012, Eli Lilly, a US pharmaceutical corporation, initiated an investor-state arbitral claim against the Canadian government after the Canadian courts invalidated two of Eli Lilly's Canadian patents, claiming that the application of the so-called ‘promise doctrine’ violates international patent law agreements. Even though this is not the first investment arbitration case in which intellectual property rights have played such a substantial role, Eli Lilly's claim against Canada illustrates an innovative attempt to employ an international investment agreement to protect IPRs, with a private actor seeking to claim compensation for the invalidation of its patents. Furthermore, it has created significant controversy over the inclusion and recognition of intellectual property rights as ‘investments’ within the scope of international investment agreements. Therefore, in this article, we examine the initial granting and revocation of Eli Lilly's patents in more detail, and discuss the critical problems arising from the possibility of private investors directly challenging domestic patent laws’ compliance with international patent agreements before international arbitral tribunals

Raising the barriers to access to medicines in the developing world : the relentless push for data exclusivity

Since the adoption of the WTO-TRIPS Agreement in 1994, there has been significant controversy over the impact of pharmaceutical patent protection on the access to medicines in the developing world. In addition to the market exclusivity provided by patents, the pharmaceutical industry has also sought to further extend their monopolies by advocating the need for additional ‘regulatory’ protection for new medicines, known as data exclusivity. Data exclusivity limits the use of clinical trial data that need to be submitted to the regulatory authorities before a new drug can enter the market. For a specified period, generic competitors cannot apply for regulatory approval for equivalent drugs relying on the originator's data. As a consequence, data exclusivity lengthens the monopoly for the original drug, impairing the availability of generic drugs. This article illustrates how the pharmaceutical industry has convinced the US and the EU to impose data exclusivity on their trade partners, many of them developing countries. The key arguments formulated by the pharmaceutical industry in favor of adopting data exclusivity and their underlying ethical assumptions are described in this article, analyzed, and found to be unconvincing. Contrary to industry's arguments, it is unlikely that data exclusivity will promote innovation, especially in developing countries. Moreover, the industry's appeal to a property rights claim over clinical test data and the idea that data exclusivity can prevent the generic competitors from ‘free-riding’ encounters some important problems: Neither legitimize excluding all others