AEGiS-14IAC: Benefits from the expansion of community ownership of technical expertise from the medical to the juridical : The case of intellectual property law.

14th International AIDS Conference

Barcelona, Spain - July 7-12, 2002

Benefits from the expansion of community ownership of technical expertise from the medical to the juridical : The case of intellectual property law.

Int Conf AIDS 2002 Jul 7-12; 14:(abstract no.. G12564)

Antoine AG
Act Up-Paris, Paris, France

Community ownership of technical expertise has emerged as the major innovation of the fight against aids. It is among other things responsible for imposing ethics standards in the face of emergency clinical research on HIV/AIDS treatments, and in general for the fact that people with HIV/AIDS are often treated more ethically and receive more ethical care than people with other diseases facing similar challenges - especially where the patient-physician relationship is concerned. Yet the common vision of community ownership of technical expertise is often limited to medical knowledge. However, dividends from community ownership of technical expertise can be of at least equal value when applied to the juridical field, as is exemplified with intellectual property in the context of the WTO Declaration on TRIPS and access to medicines.

DESCRIPTION: This paper will present the process through which the international HIV community got involved in the fight for drug accessibility and took that fight to the juridical realm. These elements will involve an analysis of constitution of the informal civil society coalition which emerged from aids activists, consumer groups and medical NGOs, the flow of knowledge and skills between those forces, and the steps through which the coalition has taken decision-makers in the space of 30 months from denial of the legality of compulsory licensing to the Doha Declaration. This paper is based on personal experience as an aids activist with no original legal training who have been part of the coalition which imposed the recognition of compulsory licensing. Community ownership of juridical expertise can yield extremely valuable results, as in exemplified in the victory of Doha, and the subsequent launch of generic-based HIV care programmes, such as in Nigeria. This research recommends that resources be allocated to facilitate community ownership of technical expertise, both medical and juridical.

Keywords: AEGIS, Intellectual Property, Ownership, Politics, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, Professional Competence, HIV Infections, Licensure, HIV Seropositivity, Research, Nigeria, Human, Economics, Ethics, legislation & jurisprudence

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