The Trans-Pacific Partnership, Drug Patents and President Clinton
There are many serious issues raised by the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), but the one that may have the greatest long-term impact is its provisions on drug patents. The explicit purpose is to make patent protection stronger and longer. While these provisions are likely to lead to higher drug prices in the United States, they will have their greatest impact in the developing world.
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If we had a government committed to better public health and reducing waste in the economy we would be looking to more efficient alternatives to the patent system. Instead we have this quixotic quest in the TPP to preserve the patent system for centuries into the future and make the whole world suffer from its wastefulness.
In this respect, President Obama seems destined to duplicate and extend one of the worst mistakes of the Clinton administration. In 1994, at the urging of pharmaceutical industry, President Clinton put the TRIPS provisions into the Uruguay Round of the WTO. This required countries throughout the developing world to have US style patent and copyright law.
Now President Obama is prepared to make these patents longer and stronger with the TPP. Perhaps President Obama plans to follow in the footsteps of President Clinton, using his post-presidency running around the world with billionaires, raising money to try to undo some of the damage he did to the state of the world's health care during his presidency. That is not a very proud legacy.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/31492-the-trans-pacific-partnership-drug-patents-and-president-clinton
