[Book review] Human rights and the WTO : the case of patents and access to medicines

Abstract

When people get serious about social justice, the "moderates" step in to show how to use existing rules to advance the social aims. This book is one of those efforts and it succeeds admirably. It will repay a good read by lawyers, diplomats, human rights advocates, and students of international affairs by illuminating the ways one might solve conflicts between legal regimes. In closely reasoned argument, Hestermeyer shows how access to medicine is a human right as is the individual right to the fruits of ones ideas and inventions. He then shows· how current rules under the GATT, WTO dispute settlement rules, and even TRIPs can be used directly or with the assistance of customary and general principles of international law to advance the right to medicine. [excerpt]