Volume: Volume 5(2) - 2001

Article type: Refereed article

Author/s: Heywood, Mark

Mark Heywood focuses on the legal action brought by the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association (PMA) to test the constitutionality of an amendment to South Africa's Medicines and Related Substances Control Act of 1965. It traverses some of the history of a case rich in irony, insofar as the PMA utilized rights in the Constitution intended to protect vulnerable people against vested interests.

The irony was compounded when the Treatment Action Campaign joined the litigation as amicus curiae to turn the PMA's case against itself. The article concludes with an examination of exactly what was achieved as a result of the case.

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