The Trans-Pacific Partnership Is Terrible for Public Health
Fifteen years ago, basic AIDS drugs cost more than $10,000 per person per year. Many of the people who needed them most — especially those living in poor countries — couldn’t pay. Millions died before public health advocates persuaded the U.S. and other governments to act — not because needed medicine didn’t exist, but because those who needed it couldn’t afford it.
Things began to change in 2001, when an Indian generic medicine firm called Cipla introduced a dollar-a-day AIDS drug cocktail. President Bush, to his great credit, created a phenomenally successful global AIDS relief program not long after. Countless lives have been saved since.
That story — of smart government action and a generic pharmaceutical company’s willingness to act- – provides an important contrast to what’s happening today as federal negotiators work out terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a pending trade deal between the U.S. and 11 Asian trading partners. Despite the damage it would do to global health, U.S. officials are advancing special rules that expand drug giants’ power under TPP, blocking generic drug competition that could save the lives of people suffering from cancer, HIV and other diseases. Our negotiators have even pushed for the agreement to provide tobacco companies with special rights to sue governments and undermine health regulation in quasi-judicial foreign tribunals.
http://economyincrisis.org/content/the-trans-pacific-partnership-is-terrible-for-public-health
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