Exclusivity would break the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The argument

As stated in Article 25 by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has the right to a standard of living that will not prove detrimental to their own health and well being. Such a statement includes rights to food, clothing, housing, social services, security, and most importantly for the case of this argument, health care. The list matters because of the company health care keeps within it. The other entries are the material conditions of staying alive, and grouping health care among them establishes that it is being treated as a necessity of the same order rather than as a service a person may or may not be able to afford. Thus, it is clear that since the inclusive right to health care is a fundamental component of basic human rights and subsequently important in living life with dignity, the increasing exclusivity of medicines and vaccines breach such an idea. The word doing the work is "inclusive". A right held by everyone is not satisfied by a treatment that exists somewhere and is available to some people; it is satisfied only where access does not depend on who a person is or what they can pay, and exclusivity is by definition an arrangement making access depend on exactly that. In other words, limiting access to a cure would, in fact, violate Article 25 as every individual has a right to not become sick or die simply because they are poor or have no access to proper health services. On this account the violation occurs when the exclusive arrangement is made rather than when somebody is finally turned away, because securing exclusive rights over a treatment determines in advance who will be able to obtain it. A right that may be set aside by whoever acquires control of the remedy is not a right but a permission, which is the sense in which exclusivity breaks the Declaration rather than merely falling short of it.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Pharmaceutical companies are businesses that need to make money in order to stay open and continue their research. Thus, they need to charge money for the drugs they produce. Sadly, some individuals may not be able to afford these drugs, and although that is an unfortunate reality, it does not mean that citizens have a right to these medications. First, according to the logic of rights, every right is held against someone. That is to say, if there were a right to health care, then, as a moral matter, either a taxpayer would have a duty to give money to someone needing healthcare or a physician would have a duty to give his or her services. There is no such duty, and therefore there is no such right; and because access to healthcare is not a right but a privilege, it cannot break the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The Declaration is a non-binding resolution rather than law, and Article 25 states a right to an adequate standard of living including medical care — a standard addressed to states and framed as progressive realisation in the covenant that followed. It creates no entitlement to a particular product, and it is not the kind of instrument a private purchaser can breach in the way the conclusion supposes. [Rejecting P2] Exclusivity and unaffordability are different things. An exclusive supply arrangement determines who distributes; tiered pricing, donation, compulsory licensing and pooled procurement determine who can obtain the product, and all have been used for vaccines and antiretrovirals. The premise treats a commercial arrangement as though it settled access. [Rejecting P3] The step requires an account of whose duty the right imposes, and none is given. On the objecting view a right is held against someone — a taxpayer, a manufacturer, a clinician — and where no such duty is identified the appeal to Article 25 does rhetorical rather than argumentative work. The premise also passes over why exclusivity is granted at all: patents and advance purchase agreements are the instruments through which development is financed, so removing them bears on whether there is a vaccine to distribute.