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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.
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.
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.
"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 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.