New WikiLeaks revelations on Trans-Pacific Trade Pact Text

Access to affordable cancer treatments in the USA and 11 other countries would be delayed for years if terms revealed today in the leaked draft Intellectual Property Chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) were to go into effect, US consumer advocacy Public Citizen said.

The text, obtained by WikiLeaks, analyzed in collaboration with Public Citizen and released yesterday, also shows worrying developments in other patent and copyright issues and explains in part why TPP talks remain deadlocked a month before President Barack Obama’s declared deadline for a deal, says Public Citizen.

“The leak shows our government demanding rules that would lead to preventable suffering and death in Pacific Rim countries, while eliminating opportunities to ease financial hardship on American families and our health programs at home,” said Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program.

Measures in the text, which advantage the patent-based pharmaceutical industry, face stiff opposition from most of the other TPP countries and health care advocates. Entrenched disagreements on these issues will be among the top challenges for TPP trade ministers who will be meeting in Australia at the end of October in an effort to meet Obama’s November deadline to complete negotiations.

Billions at stake for Big Pharma

Large brand-name drug firms want to use the TPP to impose rules throughout Asia that will raise prices on medicine purchases for consumers and governments. With billions at stake, Big Pharma wants the TPP to be a road map for rules that would govern Pacific Rim economies for the next several decades.

A US proposal in the text – to provide long automatic monopolies for biotech drugs or biologics, which includes most new treatments for cancer – contradicts the policies included in recent White House budgets and, if adopted, would undermine key cost savings touted by the administration. The past budgets have included a specific pledge to shorten the same monopoly periods so as to reduce cost burdens on Medicare and Medicaid.

If the TPP is ratified with this US-proposed provision included, Congress would be unable to reduce monopoly periods without risking significant penalties and investor-state arbitration.

“The White House undermines its pledge to cut drug costs with the harmful position it is taking in these secretive negotiations, at the behest of the major pharmaceutical companies,” said Mr Maybarduk.

The TPP is a controversial agreement being pushed by multinational corporations and negotiated behind closed doors by officials from the USA, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. The newly-leaked text is dated May 16, 2014; however, through close monitoring of negotiations, Public Citizen says it has been able to establish that contentious issues revealed in the text remain unresolved.