This argues that patents block access to essential drugs and that intellectual-property rights offer few advantages to developing countries.

ECONOMIST: Homeward bound?

In a briefing paper published earlier this year, the WHO said the scheme had achieved a 40% reduction in drug prices and significantly improved the availability of essential drugs.

BBC: India's cheap drug scheme hailed

WHO's Essential Drugs Programme (a worthy attempt to work out a minimum list of the drugs that should be available in every country in the world), describes the organisation as being like a Christmas tree on whose branches new projects are hung at random, frequently without regard to what is there already.

ECONOMIST: Repositioning the WHO

Drugs were as essential to the 1960s as they were to creating the clubbing and dance scene of the 1990s.

ECONOMIST: The geography of cool

Such an approval is essential for Arcoxia to beat Pharmacia's drugs.

FORBES: Bad News: Merck Withdraws Arcoxia Application

But they are not paragons of virtue, and even if they were, young people who follow them and organize their own naive ambitions around theirs will eventually run into the rock hard reality that drugs are to sport what Twitter is to celebrities -- not exactly essential, but a valuable resource when used strategically.

CNN: Opinion: It's time to allow doping in sport

According to Stephen Rosenfeld, a lawyer with the Prescription Access Litigation Project, which has launched a class-action suit against AstraZeneca and Barr Laboratories over Tamoxifen, an anti-cancer drug, delays to generic drugs mean that 42m Americans who lack health insurance pay a high price, and may not get essential medicines at all.

ECONOMIST: Prescription drugs