Property, Rights, and the Constitution of Contemporary Indian Biomedicine: Notes from the Gleevec Case

• Published in: Social research Vol. 78; no. 3; pp. 975 - 998
• Main Author: Rajan, Kaushik Sunder
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York New School for Social Research 22-09-2011; Johns Hopkins University Press
• Subjects: Alliances; Analysis; Bioavailability; Biomedicine; Business structures; Cancer; Cancer therapies; Constitutionalism; Constitutions; Corporations; Drug prices; Drugs; FDA approval; Generic drugs; India; Intellectual Property; International aspects; Interpretation and construction; Jasanoff, Sheila; Medical treatment; Mesylates; Molecules; Monopoly; Motivation; Part II: Buying and Selling the Body; Patent law; Patients; Pharmaceutical industry; Pharmaceutical laws; Pharmaceutical policy; Property; Property Rights; Protection; Public goods; Public health; Rights; Social research; Social Responsibility; Verdicts; Wage & price controls; India; New York; United States > US
• ISSN: 0037-783X; 1944-768X; 1944-768X
• DOI: 10.1353/sor.2011.0061

Drawing upon an exemplary case surrounding a patent on the anti-cancer drug Gleevec, I trace how intellectual property regimes drive the re-institutionalization of pharmaceutical development in India today in unsettled and contested ways. I am interested in how this case resolves, in an apparent purification, into technical and constitutional components; how the technical components are entirely unsettled; and how the constitutional components open up questions regarding the relationship between biocapital and issues of constitutionalism, rights, and corporate social responsibility. Adapted from the source document.