The Revd. Thomas Malthus no doubt used to celebrate Christmas by taking food off his starving parishioners’ tables, the quicker to help them die, and there is a school of economics which argues similarly – for depriving poor countries of life-saving medicines. But Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prizewinner for economics in 2002, is not of this persuasion, and here argues simply and humanely for a reversal of the “intellectual rights