Marie Elske Gispen participates in science talkshow KNAW

Along with Kennislinq the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (Koninklijke Nederlandse Academie van Wetenschappen, KNAW) organises science talk shows in which young scientists present their research to a broad audience.

Marie Elske Gispen presented her research in December 2016

Millions of people worldwide suffer from the poor availability and accessibility of controlled medicines such as pain control medicines morphine and codeine. The result being that a large group of these patients do not receive adequate access to medical care and sometimes even suffer in inhuman and degrading conditions. This suffering raises a range of questions from the perspective of human rights protection.

Marie Elske's research looked into the interplay of human rights and drug control norms because the production, import/export, trade, distribution, and use of controlled medicines is regulated by both fields of law.

Her multidimensional research includes both an ethical/legal analysis as well as two country studies in Uganda and Latvia. In the normative part of her work, Marie Elske analyses the question how the underlying tension of controlled medicines should be regulated from a human rights perspective. Some controlled medicines have a clear medical potential whereas they generally also have dependency and abuse potential. It is thus important to regulate these medicines in a manner in which both these aspects are taken into account. In the country studies, Marie Elske subsequently analyses whether of it is possible for states to implement this normative foundation formulated within the present control mechanisms of the international drug control treaties.

This article was published by the Faculty of Law.

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