Slashdot Mirror
Trans-Pacific Partnership May Endanger World Health, Newly Leaked Chapter Shows
blottsie writes WikiLeaks has released an updated version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) chapter on intellectual property. The new version of the texts, dated May 2014, show that little improvement has been made to sections critics say would hurt free speech online. Further, some of the TPP's stipulations could have dire consequences for healthcare in developing nations. The Daily Dot reports: "Nearly all of the changes proposed by the U.S. advantage corporate entities by expanding monopolies on knowledge goods, such as drug patents, and impose restrictive copyright policies worldwide. If it came into force, TPP would even allow pharmaceutical companies to sue the U.S. whenever changes to regulatory standards or judicial decisions affected their profits. Professor Brook K. Baker of Northeastern U. School of Law [said] that the latest version of the TPP will do nothing less than lengthen, broaden, and strengthen patent monopolies on vital medications."
"Whenever changes to regulatory standards... affected their profits?"
So if a country deregulates absurd and life threatening over-regulations, Merck, Pfizer, GSK etc sue the country/taxpayers ?
Maybe Putin will do us a favor and launch the nukes.
Seed everything.
As I understand it, pharmaceuticals are the one area where the duration of patents is about right to offset the massive delays and costs of development (due to more stringent testing requirements than the average product). On the other hand, it also means people die because they can't afford the patented medication. Quite the conundrum.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
The fact that all of these meetings are being held in secrecy and away from public discourse is very telling. Like NAFTA, this is being touted as something great for free trade, but in fact is intended to benefit an oligarchical subset of society. Worse, that same subset has no consideration for the remainder of the citizens of the USA.
Simple, write your Reps and get them to denounce this garbage legislation. Vote them out of office if they don't denounce this bill and distance themselves. If you have 2 candidates that both want the bill, petition your own candidate on the ballot and lose the cronies.
Be warned too, that just like SOPA this is going to continually be pushed behind the scenes under new names and false pretenses.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Time to fight fire with fire.
Spread the word! The secret Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty causes Ebola! If it is ratified we will all die!
Does it ever end? Rhetorical question, but does it ever end?
Up here in Canada I know for a fact Steven Harper, our little bible-quoting pro-usa-lacky has all but signed the contract and kissed it lovingly. After the fiasco that is the Alberta tar sands which is Canada's unquestionably worst environmental disaster I can't wait to see what the future holds.
And for those Canadian's not in the know the money "made" in Alberta supposedly stays in Alberta, Harpers home province. And there are (B)illions missing, can't be accounted for, dunno where it went, won't bother looking. Glad to see we're slowing turning into our "allies" south of the border. 51th state indeed!
Why the Wikileaks should have been involved?
Who are the parties driving this agreement? The corporate lobbyist in China and the US who are secretly drafting this agreement for their own benefit.
As Thomas Jefferson once stated, "Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."
Listen to US billionaire Steve Wynn in his own words call the communist China, where most of his revenue comes from, "the most laissez-faire place on the planet at the moment". When I grew up communism was the evil empire but it appears if they start taking American Express those transgressions are quickly overlooked.
China has illuminated what the most successful government model is for economic growth as they have surpassed the US in global trade and will soon become the largest economy in the world. This secret treaty is an effort to codify the globalist's privileged trading status and would accelerate the vast income inequality that plagues both China and the US. Every American should remember that the revolutionary Boston Tea Party was a reaction to a tax imposed for the direct benefit of the East India corporation's monopoly. Any elected official that privately or publicly supports this travesty should be held accountable at the voting booth.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
Not really a conundrum, the problem is easily solved by making medical research not-for-profit.
Enforced monopolies are bad for society.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I am well aware that patents are abused, both in pharmaceuticals and other technology industries. But if they're evil and something else needs to be put in place, then what would it be? If there was no way for a company to recover its investment in R&D, how would you propose getting a company to invest in the first place?
Pharmaceuticals are especially bad -- millions of dollars in research, millions in testing and regulatory clearances, plus a new product can take years to get onto the market. If there's no patent protection period on the new drug, then there's no profit in making one. So, I know companies use this example to defend restrictive patents and everyone hates them for it. But, since you're basically patenting a chemical that has a known synthesis process and can easily be made generically, it seems to me there should at least be something in place to let the discoverer make their money back.
This is going to be increasingly more important to fix somehow as we keep shifting further and further to an economy that produces mostly knowledge goods. Unless the trend reverses itself, we're going to have to come up with a system to ensure employment for millions more "knowledge workers" who would have previously been in other forms of labor or manufacturing of physical goods.
pharmaceuticals are the one area where the duration of patents is about right to offset the massive delays and costs of development
With some simple reforms, the delays and costs could be massively reduced. Some of the testing phases could be combined or eliminated. Computer simulations could be used for some early phases. The US could accept more testing done overseas, as long as appropriate protocols are followed. And there could be harsh financial sanctions on bureaucrats that let applications sit in their inbox while patients are dying.
Prime Minister John Key has said that there would be a full public disclosure before signing, also that he feels the left should also be involved as it is very important to have across the board agreement on these polices, also that he has already signed it, also that it has no affect on snapper quota............
I tell ya, living in New Zealand is a little like living in Night Vale at the moment.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
Nearly all of the changes proposed by the U.S. advantage corporate entities ...
I think he means "all of the changes proposed by the USA protect corporations with US intellectual property". Or to say it another way, the USA has written one (unilateral) free-trade agreement for the whole world to sign.
Working with knowledge and not bricks does not mean you certainly need a lot more protection.
There are certainly some cost structures that should be changed if we abolish copyright and patents, but it doesn't mean no industry can survive, even the medical industry. Look for example at Aspirin. The patent is gone on it, but its still a big money maker for Bayer. Being first in the market brings considerable advantages. Never mind that the company is german that made it, likely not by chance, because germany has been one of the western countries that had no patent protection for a long time, so the german medical companies started kicking the asses of those outside of germany quite fast.
RD also wouldn't really go up, quite likely the other way around, you can more easily base your research on previous knowledge without having lawyers go through it and what not. The biggest cost that would be harder to recoup is the cost of trials, but these could instead become state sponsored if needed (and there is a good chance that its not all that needed).
This book is just great to understand copyright and patents problems: http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/anew.all.pdf
I don't really feel like siding with pharma corps, but considering the development cost, the alternative to people not able to afford medication is medication not existing because there is no ROI on developing it.
You could of course go the European way and have general health care coverage so you can by definition afford the medication, but if I got the general sentiment towards that right something like an affordable healthcare plan is considered evil in the US.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"If you criticize a Democrat, you must be a Republican.
If have a criticism of capitalism, you must be a communist! You hate money!"
Let's not fall down that slippery slope.
This isn't about angry anarchists wanting to abolish patents or completely overhaul IP laws. Citizens are pissed, and rightfully so, because they have NO INFLUENCE on these new policies. Everything is being discussed and decided behind closed doors. Many high ranking politicians do not even have access to the information.
We expect corporations(especially those in big pharma) to be greedy bastards, but when they're lobbying for something, we also expect to be able to protest against the measures we do not like. This isn't the case with the TPP.
Where should these tests be held? I hope the good people of Guinea get lucky, then at least in name it would be fitting.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It is interesting that the article makes several claims but does not back thest claims up by referring to the draft. Here is a quote from the draft that seems to contradict some of the claims about availability of medicine;
The Parties have reached the following understandings regarding this Chapter:
The obligations of this Chapter do not and should not prevent a Party from taking measures to protect public health-{by promoting access to medicines for all, in particular concerning cases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other epidemics as well as circumstances of extreme urgency or national emergency.} Accordingly, while reiterating their commitment to this Chapter, the Parties affirm that this Chapter can and should be interpreted and implemented in a manner supportive of each Party's right to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all.
In recognition of the commitment to access to medicines that are supplied in accordance with the Decision of the General Council of 30 August 2003 on the Implementation of Paragraph Six of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health (WT/L/540) and the WTO General Council Chairman's statement accompanying the Decision (JOB(03)/177, WT/GC/M/82), as well as the Decision on the Amendment of the TRIPS Agreement, adopted by the General Council, 6 December 2005 and the WTO General Council Chairperson's statement accompanying the Decision (WT/GC/M/100) (collectively, the “TRIPS/health solution”), this Chapter does not and should not prevent the effective utilization of the TRIPS/health solution.
As much as I hate violence, it's time to get physical baby!
We won't be safe until the people who keep trying to make this laws are dead. You think I'm kidding? They will keep pushing these laws until someone either they get accepted. They know eventually they will wear us down. Well, is this what you want? Every time you pay Netflix, you pay for cable TV, every movie you go see/rent/buy, or music you buy, you are telling these people it's okay to walk on our rights.
Your money is seen as a yes vote to these people!
You want to be slaves to the copyright/corporation government we are producing? Remember what it took to get rid of the slaves in the USA last time? Big ass war. Let's avoid the war by killing the anti-freedom corporations.
Be seeing you...
If this is what they're doing behind the scenes?
They create more patents and "Intellectual" Property, companies sell their IP to a subsidiary in Bermuda that rents the "property" back to them for all of their profits. They in turn don't need to pay tax.
And the more ridiculous the IP the more insane it becomes, with some companies renting nothing more than their own name as a trademark.
This idea that the west can live of IP tax is flawed.
It needs both approaches together. Sometimes research needs the sort of massive funding only commercial interests can provide. Other times there wouldn't be any profit it in (Disease too rare, treatment too cheap) and you need non-profit work from academia, charity or government. Neither is right in all circumstances.
So we're told, and yet pharmaceutical companies sit as some of the biggest in the world alongside oil companies and banks.
If it were true that patent durations on medicines were essential to recoup the large R&D costs then you would expect that such companies were only just scraping a profit because the patent terms would only just be long enough as it is to make that profit as they claim.
But the fact that their profits are so massively high implies that there's a good chance you could reduce medical patent terms and it'd still be a highly profitable industry.
Thus I suspect the whole thing is a whitewash, and that medical patent terms don't in fact need to be as long as they are.
I can think of one example of why they're going to make profits anyway, Boots, one of, if not the UK's biggest pharmaceutical store used to sell a value range of hayfever tablets that are no longer under patent protection, they cost something like £0.49 for 7 and were all but identical to the £4 box of Bendadryl you could buy. They recently cut this range and now sell their non-value own brand product that is identical in all but packaging for about 5x the price of the value version they used to sell.
So given that the amount of profit they make on a drug seems to be more down to how they want to brand it and how much they want to make then I think the argument that patent expiration kills their product is nonsense. Hell, Lego has become the most profitable toy company in the world in the face of it's patents lapsing and greater competition by way of cheaper clone brands turning up.
So you'll have to excuse me if I'm skeptical of the argument that "reduced patent terms will kill our company". I've yet to see any evidence of it, and any examples industry may throw up seem to be more about corporate failings than an inherent structural need for patents to make some businesses viable.
I'd be intrigued to know how many patented inventions only make their money back over 20 years, I wouldn't be surprised if most patented inventions that don't make their money back in 10 years never do anyway, and that most patented inventions that do make their money back probably do so in less than 5 years, though that's just a guess of course so I could be wrong.
So I don't think medicines are an area where patent terms are reasonable quite frankly, if they were then big pharma wouldn't make the same sorts of exhorbitant profits as banks and big oil do.
Which isn't to say I'm against patents in this respect, I think patents for this sort of thing are absolutely reasonable, but I'm not convinced they need to be as long as they are. I suspect 5 - 10 years would be ample enough time to make your money back.
TPP would even allow pharmaceutical companies to sue the U.S. whenever changes to regulatory standards or judicial decisions affected their profits
So is this about the normal complaints process, with timing limitations? Surely even in the US decisions become bounding by law at one state or another.
Because companies are entitled to maximum profits, even if they do a crappy job.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Leave nothing to chance.
This is not a free trade agreement, this is corporations attempting to legislate without actually having to deal with pesky legislatures.
Anyone who supports the US Constitution should be against this.
I don't really feel like siding with pharma corps, but considering the development cost, the alternative to people not able to afford medication is medication not existing because there is no ROI on developing it.
You have scientific evidence of this being the case, I suppose? How could you know what would happen in an alternate reality where they don't have these/any patents? Or is it just speculation?
Wrong revolution. Orchestrated removal of 500 of the most powerful people in America would make a much more efficient action.
It sounds more like it would allow them to sue over costly regulations and force them to justify them in court.
I am fine with that.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The interesting detail is that you (and me) do not living in a democracy, you live in a plutocracy in practice. And in a plutocracy there is no place for this thing called people.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
For profit is never right. And it should be noted that this "massive funding" is not as massive as you think. Not to mention that many of these companies still get grants and "collaborations" with uni. The are often recouping costs from their patents that the state paid for. There is a reason why treatments cost more in the US by a large margin that anywhere else. Because its not about health. Its about profit.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
We already do a lot of computer simulations for this sort of thing. Paid for by public funding of course. So that the corporations can get their drug patented.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
These development costs are massively overstated. Sure they are high. But not anything like high enough to justify the costs of some treatments in the US.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
the prison system will just pay full price for drugs that people need and it will be on the backs of all us tax payers.
The calculated long-term effects of the U.S-proposed TPP is the absorption and take-over of the European and Asian markets and economy. If you own the markets, you own the economy, and if you own the economy then you can dictate the politics. It angers me that the people who make the decisions in Europe aren't more clear-sighted.
The TPP must be rejected, by any means.
I haven't looked yet, but I guarantee there will be at least one post from a libertarian claiming this problem is caused by government.
I know that there are three main motivators for human: greed, fear and greed. So unless you can make some billionaires scared of some disease you want researched (and then convince them somehow to give it away once it's done), what's left is simply money.
I don't like that system and I'd be cheerleader for anyone who can change it, but human simply is a greedy old bastard who can't be assed to move his ass unless he gets money for it or something rammed up said orifice if he doesn't move.
If you have a solution for it, I'm very eager to hear it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I agree, and I agree that patent laws are WAY out of whack, but simply kicking them out the window is not going to be a good idea either.
I'd say that a company has to publish their (verifiable!) research cost and once cost*X is reached, the patent is off. X is to be determined, but I'd suggest choosing a number bigger than 1...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
cost*X in revenue, of course. Just to appease the nitpickers. :)
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I know that there are three main motivators for human: greed, fear and greed.
But what you don't know is how the system would work without patents. There would likely be alternate business strategies and perhaps some government intervention of a different sort. You can't really say, since scientific evidence is lacking. We shouldn't except restrictions especially if they don't have science backing them up.
We also take in you sick, your tired , diseased illegals because it is "racist" by pointing it out or at them at Home Depot...
This would make it kind of pointless to develop drugs that have a high production cost.
You could count profit instead - but not profit on the drug, but profit on the patent. Let the company pick any cost per unit of product as the 'patent profit', then count that down for each unit of product sold. However, also force the company to license the patent for the same amount to anyone else that wants it.
One of my politicians raised the issue about the secrecy of this agreement including the language allowing companies outside Australia to change our laws, the move to discuss this was down voted with only a handful of positive votes. It's disgusting and demoralizing to continue to see our supposed leaders selling us out. I'm personally hoping for a revolution, because otherwise it seems things will only get worse if we keep up this apathy.
Seriously if you don't criticize both Democrats and Republicans than you are in need of a skill called critical thinking. It's a skill lacking in too many people!