Big Pharma talks up Trans Pacific Partnership but profits trump patients

[TexasTowelie]

Each year of extra monopoly protection would cost Australia's Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme hundreds of millions of dollars.

The American business community's spin machine has gone into overdrive as the finish line for the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations come into view. One of the more over-the-top examples of recent hype is an open love letter to the TPP posted on an American industry lobby website just before Valentine's Day.

The love letter, posted on the Global Intellectual Property Centre website, seems at first glance simply harmless (though certainly charmless) hyperbole. But in amongst phrases like "I'd be a fool not to cross the Pacific for you" is a demand that strikes fear into the hearts of those concerned with access to affordable medicines. What the pharmaceutical industry is proposing is that it be provided with12 years of absolute monopoly – seven years longer than the current data protection period in Australia – during which it can charge whatever the market will bear.

Biologic products include many expensive new treatments for cancer and immune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis. What the pharmaceutical industry is proposing is to prevent the clinical trial data used to register these products with regulatory agencies like Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration, from being used to register follow-on (competing) products for 12 years.

"Our love is meaningful and can satisfy our biological needs – especially if you guarantee to protect regulatory data for 12 years," says the letter.

Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/comment/big-pharma-talks-up-trans-pacific-partnership-but-profits-trump-patients-20150416-1mm8ct.html

[Matilda]

1. Article from Independent Australia.

I've puzzled over why various leaders are so eager to sell out their people to the big corporations, and this sentence in the article caught my eye:

"The United States is pushing for the deal, partly driven by fear that China would move into the economic void the US would create were it not to negotiate a trade deal with Asia."

Makes some sense, viewed from that perspective. And of course, there have been very few Australian PMs on either side who haven't fallen over themselves to tag along behind the U.S. I can think of only one: Gough Whitlam. And Malcolm Fraser in his later years of disenchantment with the Liberal Party, but while he was PM, I think not so much.

Above all, alarm bells should ring even with the unthinking amongst us that we're expected to clap our hands with joy over a deal whose terms will remain unknown to us. Especially for Australia, with our excellent PBS, which even Abbott hasn't (yet) succeeded in ruining.

Link to the full article here: https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/tpp-deal-heralds-soaring-cost-of-medicines,7815