Posts Tagged ‘“Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement”’

July20

We Can End AIDS: Join Us this Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

By: Burcu Kilic

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) was first recognized in the United States in 1981. The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was identified soon after in 1983. By the mid-1980’s, the disease was recognized as an international epidemic which had spread throughout most of the world. Millions have lost their lives since.

Three decades later, we may finally have an opportunity to end AIDS."We Can End AIDS 2012"

This year, new science demonstrated that treatment can also be effective as HIV prevention.  For the first time it is becoming possible to model an end to the epidemic. Activists’ calls for an AIDS-free generation have been echoed worldwide.

But ending AIDS will depend in part on massively scaling up access to treatment. A major obstacle is the monopoly power of the giant pharmaceutical companies.

In 2000, basic HIV treatment cost up to $15,000 per person, per year (ppy). In developing countries, treatment was out of reach for all but the very wealthy, and HIV was a death sentence.

Then, activists working together across borders and increasing availability of generic medicines facilitated a treatment revolution, eventually driving basic HIV medicine prices to under $150 ppy – a 99% cost reduction.  Today, antiretroviral (ARV) medicines provide eight million people in low- and middle-income countries with long term hope for a healthy and long living future.

But millions more still await access, and lifelong AIDS treatment requires access to newer and more potent drug regimens, due to drug resistance.

Unfortunately, most newer ARVs are under the monopoly control of multinational pharmaceutical companies. The high treatment costs for these medicines threaten to block the remarkable progress already achieved and impede the goal of “getting to zero.”

To continue the treatment revolution and seek an end to AIDS, we need competition and access not only for off-patent ARVs but also for the patent-protected and very expensive second- and third-line ARVs. Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program is working with partners in more than one dozen countries to challenge Big Pharma’s monopoly abuses and realize this vision.

We are also fighting to protect access to medicines in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade agreement under negotiation now between the United States and countries in Latin America and Asia. The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has advanced a Big Pharma wish list that would lengthen, strengthen and broaden pharmaceutical monopolies throughout the region. We are inspiring governments and health advocates fight back.

We envision a very different Asia-Pacific region partnership–one that advances pharmaceutical access and innovation simultaneously.  We believe better public policy is possible. We firmly hold to the promise of an “AIDS-free generation”. Getting there requires standing up to Big Pharma, promoting competition, and expanding access to medicines.

That’s why, this Tuesday Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program will join the We Can End AIDS March and ask for “accountability from Big Pharma and government officials around the world”.

We need your support to create a future free of AIDS. Please join us on Tuesday and let’s raise our voices against Big Pharma.

Posted in: Activism, Health, Pharmaceuticals, Trade0 comments

June25

Les Nouvelles de Bruxelles : The Changing Politics of the Knowledge Economy

By: Burcu Kilic

The politics of the global knowledge economy are shifting: from mercantilism to co-operation, from closed commercial regimes toward open source. Last week, the European Parliament Committee on International Trade (INTA) passed a report recommending the rejection of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Since the European Union (EU) and its 22 member states signed ACTA in January 2012, ACTA has caused nothing but consternation in Europe. Citizens of Poland, Bulgaria and the Germany took to the streets to show their opposition. These protests initiated a pan-European movement awakening the spirit of 1968. Young Europeans asked policy makers and politicians in Brussels to respect their rights, privacy and freedom on the Internet.

The ‘old continent’ woke up to what people in the global South have known and fought for over many years. Intellectual property (IP) is not merely a commercial or trade-related issue or something we can allow to be monopolized by corporations. It’s about us. It touches human life. IP rules can dictate how we access, disseminate and share knowledge, technology and information. They are not only about corporations and their interests. They are also about our internet freedom, privacy, scientific research, textbooks and journals, traditional and cultural knowledge, stewardship of biodiversity, arts and literature. The current orthodox IP standards, largely imposed by corporations, create exclusive controls over knowledge and information and have proved to be inadequate and frequently inappropriate in today’s knowledge-based economy.

What ACTA did – albeit inadvertently – was provide an impetus for a new vision of prioritizing people’s rights over IP fundamentalism in the 21st century. In recent decades, there has been a rush to over-regulate this relatively new and rather conceptually confusing form of property. The IP maximalist perspectives create modern juridical bureaucracies; monstrous, absurd legal procedures and protocols. From the perspective of people, the over-aggressive rules pushed through agreements like ACTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) are understood as a declaration of war threatening personal rights and freedoms on the Internet and in our daily lives. This is why the people of Europe raised their voice to warn policy makers in Brussels about the inadequacy of the current IP maximalist model, which places IP monopolies at its heart instead of sharing or disseminating knowledge, technology or information.

The ‘war against piracy’ turned into a revolution against the corporate internet. Brussels could not stay indifferent to the outcry. First, the Committee on Legal Affairs (Juri), Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) and the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) voted to express “opinions against ACTA”. If three strikes weren’t enough, a vote in the Development Committee gave a fourth. Finally, on June 21 the trade committee (INTA) dealt a serious blow to ACTA. The INTA vote shows that European politicians increasingly understand we, the people, will not let healthcare and internet policy be dictated by a very few outdated corporate interests. Rather, we need forward-looking, flexible policies for technology, knowledge and creative works that unleash our human genius. ACTA is a retrograde policing approach to the knowledge economy: it promotes IP fundamentalism, it treats competition like criminality and the internet as a threat.

We cannot count ACTA out yet. The final voting in the European Parliament will be held on the 4th of July. The Fourth of July is an important day for Americans, which honors the birthday of the United States of America and the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. But it seems that it would also be a memorable day for the Europeans, honoring the sense of European citizenship in today’s knowledge economy based on the values of individual freedom, equality, tolerance, privacy and democracy .

Thanks to Peter Maybarduk for his contributions to this post.

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Posted in: Activism, Consumer Protection, Internet Free Speech, Open Government, Pharmaceuticals, Trade, Uncategorized0 comments

June21

Can you say “Déjà vu” in Spanish?

By: Keanan McGonigle

Dear Neighbor:

Photo Credit: Voices from Russia

Congratulations on your inclusion in the elite group of states that are currently negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement! Your acceptance into this proposed “historic, 21st century trade agreement” means that much of the “burden” of making laws and regulations for your nation will be taken off of you. No worries; lobbyists for Hollywood and American pharmaceutical companies and more than 600 official “corporate trade advisers” to the Office of United States Trade Representative (USTR) will help take care of the details.

Sorry to mention it, but we’re afraid many of your laws pertaining to intellectual property (IP), affecting issues from Internet privacy to access to affordable medications, might need a little “tweaking” to ensure they comply with the specifications of U.S. corporate “advisers.” The USTR’s demands at the TPP negotiations read like a wish list from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and YOU have the opportunity to grant all their wishes.

You see, the condition the U.S. imposed for Mexico to get a seat at this corporate banquet was that Mexico agree to accept everything that the other countries already have negotiated over the past three years. Sure, NAFTA required some nasty changes to your IP laws. Remember the millions your government wasted trying to lift the U.S. patent on common yellow beans that a bio-prospector filed after NAFTA? Well, wait until you get a look at the 21st century NAFTA on steroids!

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Posted in: Activism, Congress, Consumer Protection, Health, Internet Free Speech, Litigation, Pharmaceuticals, Regulation, Social Justice, Uncategorized4 comments

April11

More Tumult at the TPP: Secret negotiations against Internet Freedom continue in Chile; Big Pharma allies attempt to shut down critics’ event (again)

By: Steven Knievel

Trade "intellectual property" TPP "Public Citizen"Steven Knievel and Peter Maybarduk

Talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement (TPP), which the U.S. is negotiating with Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam, are continuing this week (April 9-13) in Santiago, Chile in the form of an “intersessional meeting” on intellectual property (IP).  Leaked documents show that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is pressuring developing countries to trade away access to lifesaving medicines in order expand the patent-based monopoly power of the giant U.S. pharmaceutical companies, and designing new rules to expand the invasive power of Hollywood and the recording industry online, threatening users’ Internet freedom.

The last time such a meeting was convened on IP in January in Hollywood, CA a stakeholder event organized by public interest groups in the same hotel as the negotiations was canceled after the hotel received pressure from the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). Simultaneously, USTR made sure the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) had access to negotiators, as they were given an exclusive tour of 20th Century Fox Studios guided by a representative of the studio’s government relations office.

USTR is clamping down on public participation to minimize the spread of information which challenges their hard-line IP maximalist agenda that seeks to empower corporations at the expense of public health and knowledge. In addition to increasing reliance on intersessionals, like this week’s Santiago meeting, where stakeholders are not given a forum to participate, USTR has now effectively reduced stakeholder participation in the official negotiating rounds by eliminating their opportunity to give presentations to negotiators in an official forum. USTR’s response signals the substantial impact critics of the TPP are having. At the March negotiating round in Melbourne, one stakeholder presentation after another criticized USTR’s aggressive pro-Big Pharma patent proposal, filling most of the afternoon. Now TPP countries are resisting USTR demands that would imperil their access to medicines.

Cozy relationships with government aren’t the only way corporations are influencing these talks. This week, American University and the University of Chile arranged to host an event to present analyses critical of particular proposals in the TPP. These include leaked provisions that would greatly favor Big Pharma, expand drug monopolies and raise medicine prices. The keynote speaker was to be Senator Ricardo Lagos, a major political figure in Chile considered to be a possible candidate for the presidency. Nevertheless, the public University of Chile law school canceled the event with less than two days’ notice, evidently on the advice of a member of the faculty who is a paid advisor of the multinational pharmaceutical companies’ association in Chile (the Cámara de Industria Farmacéutica, or CIF).

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Posted in: Activism, Health, Internet Free Speech, Open Government, Pharmaceuticals, Social Justice, Trade, Uncategorized19 comments

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