Pogge's Poor

Pogge certainly does not agree that medicine and medical advancements should be treated in the same way that we treat things such as software and fashion. In these instances, excluding people from goods that "cost nothing at the margin" is justifiable and therefore morally permissible to him, as extending access to such innovations imposes a cost on those who would "otherwise be exclusive beneficiaries of the innovation" (5). Grace's post highlights why medical advancements and products do not enjoy the same treatment in Pogge's argument, as while he does advocate for the practical necessity of extending access to these innovations ("we have reason to want dangerous diseases to be decimated... rather thank kept around... as [they are] a massive burden on the poor and a threat to all") his true argument rests on the moral significance he sees in the fulfillment of human rights. While being unable to access the latest handbag design won't kill you, denying the world's poor access to medicine due to a similar kind of patent is "morally problematic" as it denies them their basic "right to life" (6). 

Pogge then outlines the difficulties associated with the idea that inventors enjoy some sort of transcendent "natural right" over the use of their inventions with this conception of moral justification in mind. His first point is somewhat weak, questioning the legitimacy of extensive intellectual property rights by questioning the specific "contours enshrined in the TRIPS agreements" (6). It seems easy to question the grounds upon which an international agreement is made with respect to its content and legitimacy, and so further exploring this point seems unnecessary. I am more interested in his later points, where he expands on this idea of moral justification within the context of human rights. He asks how to weigh the "natural right of inventors" in preserving exclusive access to their medical invention versus the "right to life of poor people," and seems upset that "such a person's entitlement to the products of his labor trumps the needs of others, no matter how desperate" (6). This again reinforces what I see to be his claims towards human rights, and the basis upon which actions that detract from them can be morally justified. 

To further this examination, Pogge calls upon Robert Nozick, and claims that even with his libertarian ideologies he would "require that other [inventors] be left free to replicate the latter's invention" as by depriving others of the opportunity to "invent the medicine without having to prove that they did so independently" that inventor would be creating scarcity and would not be leaving "enough and as good" for others (8). What confuses me, however, is whether Pogge is more concerned with types of inventions or the processes that lead to them. While it would seem that his argument mainly concerns the former, he states that the inventor "cannot acquire veto powers over third parties who synthesize medicine of the same type on their own - even if they heard about his prior invention or found a sample of it lost or abandoned," suggesting that the process by which a product is invented holds similar weight in this consideration. I would like to explore, along with Pogge's arguments regarding moral justifications and human rights, his ideas of type versus process in intellectual property rights (and whether that distinction is important) as it relates to Nozick and other political philosophers.