Public Health Groups Urge Congress To Reject Trans-Pacific Partnership

A coalition of 58 public health groups, ranging from Oxfam America and Doctors Without Borders (USA) to Public Citizen and the Communications Workers of America, is urging Congress to reject the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), at least in its current form. Among the provisions they object to are several addressing intellectual property, including measures that enable patent “evergreening,” where 20-year patent extensions are granted for new uses, methods or processes that are related to existing patents. According to the coalition, the TTP would expand the monopoly power of pharmaceutical companies, restrict generic competition, and “thereby enable medicine prices to keep spiraling out of reach — locking in a broken system here at home and exporting that system to the eleven other TPP countries and those that may join later, including lower-income developing countries where public resources are limited and most people pay for medicines out-of-pocket.”