{"id":91052,"date":"2013-11-13T19:54:40","date_gmt":"2013-11-13T18:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/secret-docs-show-tpp-is-worst-ever-trade-deal-for-public-health\/"},"modified":"2013-11-13T22:56:52","modified_gmt":"2013-11-13T21:56:52","slug":"secret-docs-show-tpp-is-worst-ever-trade-deal-for-public-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/secret-docs-show-tpp-is-worst-ever-trade-deal-for-public-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret Docs Show TPP is ‘Worst Ever’ Trade Deal for Public Health"},"content":{"rendered":"

Legal experts say U.S. conditions in TPP would erode access to life-saving medicines in Pacific-Rim countries<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Secret documents<\/a> published Wednesday expose the Obama administration’s closed-door efforts to slash internet freedoms and erode access to medicines in the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership through a series of corporate giveaways and proposals that analysts say are the most damaging and dangerous in the history of such so-called “free trade” deals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Obama administration’s proposals are the worst \u2014 the most damaging for health \u2014 we have seen in a U.S. trade agreement to date,” said<\/a> Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s global access to medicines program. “The Obama administration has backtracked from even the modest health considerations adopted under the Bush administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

A secret 94-page draft chapter on intellectual property negotiations, published by Wikileaks,<\/a> provides a snap-shot of the secret 19th round<\/a> of negotiations that took place in the country of Brunei in late August. While the TPP negotiations started in 2008<\/a> and the agreement is poised to be the largest U.S. trade deal ever, this is the first time the public has access to any draft of this chapter.<\/p>\n

Legal experts say the document reveals a U.S. effort to champion the demands of the pharmaceutical industry by pushing to reduce the ability of countries to override patents, even when it would improve public health or make life-saving medicines more affordable.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Obama administration’s shameful bullying on behalf of the giant drug companies would lead to preventable suffering and death in Asia-Pacific countries,” said<\/a> Maybarduk. “And soon the administration is expected to propose additional TPP terms that would lock Americans into high prices for cancer drugs for years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experts also say the chapter shows an Obama administration taking aim at internet freedoms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe WikiLeaks text also features Hollywood and recording industry-inspired proposals \u2014 think about the SOPA debacle \u2014 to limit Internet freedom and access to educational materials, to force Internet providers to act as copyright enforcers and to cut off people’s Internet access,\u201d said Burcu Kilic, an intellectual property lawyer with Public Citizen. \u201cThese proposals are deeply unpopular worldwide and have led to a negotiation stalemate.\u201d<\/p>\n

“The longest section of the Chapter \u2014 ‘Enforcement’ \u2014 is devoted to detailing new policing measures, with far-reaching implications for individual rights, civil liberties, publishers, internet service providers and internet privacy, as well as for the creative, intellectual, biological and environmental commons,” reads a statement released by Wikileaks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Obama administration has so far refused to release drafts of the negotiated text, and thus all of what’s publicly known about the deal has been learned cumulatively by a number or fragmented and limited leaks. Previous documents show negotiators are pushing to include NAFTA-like corporate tribunals<\/a> that allow multinational companies to circumvent national legal systems and domestic protections of the environment and public health by settling with governments in secret courts.<\/p>\n

The parties to the agreement\u2013Australia, the US, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore\u2013collectively comprise nearly 40 percent<\/a> of the world’s GDP. Excluding China, the agreement appears to be in step with the U.S. military pivot to Asia<\/a> in a bid to hedge against China’s rising power.<\/p>\n

The revelations come ahead of the TPP Chief Negotiators’ summit in Salt Lake City, Utah<\/a> later this month and in the midst of a White House bid to fast-track<\/a> the agreement, details of which have been kept from both the U.S. public and elected lawmakers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.<\/p>\n

Source: Common Dreams<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Legal experts say U.S. conditions in TPP would erode access to life-saving medicines in Pacific-Rim countries Secret documents published Wednesday expose the Obama administration’s closed-door efforts to slash internet freedoms and erode access to medicines in the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership through a series of corporate giveaways and proposals that analysts say are the most damaging […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":91053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-91052","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}