As the details in the TPP agreement become known, the worries mount. The BATR RealPolitik Newsletter October 8, 2015 edition, TPP Deceitful Deal is Done, has a number of significant articles on the TPP agreement and links to the recently released sections of the document.
Finally, the opportunity to examine the particulars allows for citing specifics. What are you supposed to believe, your own evaluation of the terms or the Summary of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement provided by the government?
Two sections prove enlightening. Start out with the TPP Intellectual Property Chapter is “A Disaster for Global Health” and read the Expert Analysis: “Pharmaceutical Provisions in the TPP” (PDF, HTML).
•Patents for new uses and new methods of using existing products (Article QQ.E.1.2, p. 17);
•A low inventiveness threshold – potentially preventing countries from tightening the criteria for granting patents (Footnote 33, p. 17);
•Patent term extensions to compensate for delays in granting patents (Article QQ.E.12, p. 20) and delays in marketing approval (Article QQ.E.14, p. 22);
•Data protection for small molecule drugs – at least 5 years for new pharmaceutical products plus 3 years for new indications, formulations or methods of administration (Article QQ.E.16, p. 23-24);
•Patent linkage provisions likely to result in delays in marketing approval for generic drugs (Article QQ.E.17); and
•Market exclusivity for biologics, provided through one of two options: at least 8 years of data protection, or at least 5 years of data protection and other measures to “deliver a comparable outcome in the market” (Article QQ.E.20, p. 25-26).
Oh, woe, is me. It sounds like Big Pharma has just spliced together some cartel genes that will extend their longevity as profit centers for the management of diseases that never attempt to find actual cures.
The Washington Examiner reports in Why everybody hates the drug deal in the trade pact.
“The White House’s last-minute compromise on drug copyright protections in a huge trade agreement appears to have pleased nobody, with liberals, conservatives, patient groups and the industry all criticizing the deal.”
“It is a giveaway to Big Pharma, which wants to lock cheaper generics out of the market for eight years,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., a leading trade skeptic. “This will result in more expensive medicines, as well as slower progress toward medical breakthroughs.”
What is found in the TPP talks is a precipitous pattern of corporatist protectionism over the beneficial interests of the consumer. So much for the lofty medicine, prescribed as “Free Trade”, as a cure for a healthier future.
In actuality Trans-Pacific Partnership could pose risk to public healthcare, leaked draft shows that most of Asian countries are being pushed into accepting the U.S. medical pharmacological model.
“The US was initially seeking 12 years of data exclusivity on biologics, and they have now backed down to eight years in this draft, which they’re selling as a big concession and as a new flexibility,” said Gleeson, who is also a spokeswoman for the Public Health Association of Australia.
“But eight years is much longer than the current protection period in all TPP countries except for Japan, Canada and the US.”
The next section has received far more attention. What will the internet look like if all the provisions are implemented to penalize and even criminalize fair use news reporting?
The International Business Times points out the legal jeopardy and censorship implications encoded in the language of the agreement.
Cited in the account, TPP Pits Big Tech Against Internet Freedom Groups As Wikileaks Reveals Strict IP, Copyright Protections, has Maira Sutton, a global policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation making a grim warning:
“Protecting trade secrets is a major theme throughout the highly technical TPP agreement, with language that seems to “make it a crime for whistleblowers and journalists to disclose trade secrets,” Sutton said. “If a journalist reports on the Snowden documents, which reveal how tech companies deal with the National Security Agency, they could be penalized. The language is that vague.”
Obviously, you know that Free Speech is on life support. If the drug cabal seeks guarantee returns in the TPP arrangements, compare the effective results to be similar to that miracle of modern medicine, Part D addition in Medicare. Who pays for the privilege of access to the aesculapian concoctions that claim the healing art is a practice that only the doctor profession is fit to dispense?
The bottom line that is missed by the medicated society is that big business operates under a much different set of rules from the real economy that provides the basic needs of the consumer. So when the Leaked Trans-Pacific Partnership Document Raises New Concerns For Progressives, it should also be a concern for every end user.
“If you dig deeper, you’ll notice that all of the provisions that recognize the rights of the public are non-binding, whereas almost everything that benefits rightsholders is binding,” the group writes, citing access to material in the public domain as one area that has been weakened. “All of that has now been lost in favor of a feeble, feel-good platitude that imposes no concrete obligations on the TPP parties whatsoever.”
There lies the rub. Transnational’s do not see the buyers of their products as essential partners in the chain of mutual rewarding business transaction. There is not even a veiled appearance of a level playing field. The TPP agreement has the objective of consolidating corporatist enforcement over a global population that has effectively been marginalized, from the political process that is steamrolling approval.
The death of discourse and the incarceration of internet intellectual insights is a guaranteed byproduct from the global destruction of independent national economies. Corporate cultures see their customers as money center migrants, who can be evicted from the consumer promised land, if these international trade treaties are not implemented.
The impact of allowing the adoption of such a trading system is the demise of individual autonomy, replaced with rationed dependency for personal survival.
James Hall, Sartre