‘TPP would cost lives’: WikiLeaks unveils full intellectual property chapter
RT.com
9 Oct, 2015
Transparency advocate WikiLeaks has obtained and released the intellectual property chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the massive trade deal among Pacific Rim nations comprising 40 percent of global gross domestic product.
The intellectual property chapter indicates new restrictions on generic drugs, which are much less expensive than drugs made by patent holders within the pharmaceutical industry.
The leaked documents are dated October 5, the same day the 12 participating nations ‒ including the United States, Mexico, Canada, Japan and Vietnam ‒ announced a deal had been struck in secret between trade negotiators. The full text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will not be released to the public until after October 19, WikiLeaks noted, the date of the Canadian federal election.
“The finalized chapter would require all countries eventually to conform to every pharmaceutical patent rule in the TPP, regardless of any individual country’s wealth (or lack thereof) or level of development,” Public Citizen, a government transparency group, wrote in an expert analysis of the leaked documents.
“If adopted, the rules will delay generic and biosimilar competition, making the medicines upon which people depend to stay alive expensive for longer and, as a consequence, unobtainable.”
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