Speaker: The Hon Michael Kirby AC CMG, past Justice of the High Court of Australia (1996-2009) and recently member of the Secretary General's High-Level Panel on Access to Essential Health Technologies (2015-16).

 Abstract: In this talk, Michael Kirby will describe his recent work as a member of a body (HLP) created by the UN Secretary General designed to ensure the achievement of ‘’SDG 3’’ of the Sustainable Development Goals, endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 2015. This promises people everywhere access to essential healthcare by 2030. Intellectual property law (patents) is both useful to the invention of new technologies and sometimes an impediment to their effective availability, particularly in lower and middle income countries. An illustration can be seen in the remarkable pharmaceutical for the treatment of hepatitis C, which can, over a 12 week course, cure most patients of the virus. However, prices for the product range from an average $800 in Egypt to $78,000 in USA. In a report released in September 2016, the HLP proposed a compromise between those who advocated tearing up the current international patent law and those who urged that it was essential and fully justified. In this talk, the speaker will describe the challenges of getting progress on such a sensitive topic involving powerful and hostile opponents and other obstacles to progress.