[CTC] Why Doctors Without Borders Is Lobbying Against Obama’s Trade Deal

[Arthur Stamoulis]

http://www.nationaljournal.com/health-care/why-doctors-without-borders-is-lobbying-against-obama-s-trade-deal-20150510 <http://www.nationaljournal.com/health-care/why-doctors-without-borders-is-lobbying-against-obama-s-trade-deal-20150510>
 
 
Why Doctors Without Borders Is Lobbying Against Obama’s Trade Deal
The physicians group warns that the Trans-Pacific Partnership would lock in high drug prices.
 
National Journal
By Dylan Scott
May 10, 2015
 
President Obama's pending trade deal has attracted plenty of critics, but one might be more surprising than the rest: Doctors Without Borders, the humanitarian organization better known for swooping into epidemic-struck countries than lobbying officials in Washington.

The physicians group has quietly been opposing the emerging Trans-Pacific Partnership for a few years now, but its efforts are growing more public. It sent multiple letters to Obama in the past few months, as the congressional debate about giving the president fast-track authority has ramped up, warning about the implications for drug costs in other countries. And it is putting up subway ads on the D.C. Metro.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning group frequently does policy work in developing countries, said Judit Rius Sanjuan, who oversees Doctors Without Borders' drug access campaign in the United States, in a phone interview. But such a robust effort here "is not usual practice for us."

"It's not usual business for us, and the reason is because we're very worried," she said. "We are doing anything we can to make sure the public is aware."

The organization's worry: Drug costs.

The concern, Sanjuan said, is that the deal would require the dozen or so participating countries to amend intellectual property law, including patent rules, to give pharmaceutical companies more exclusive time on the market. Those fears were sparked by a 2013 WikiLeaks disclosure <https://wikileaks.org/tpp-ip2/attack-on-affordable-cancer-treatments.html> on the TPP negotiations.

"It would force them to change the law of many of these countries that are currently negotiating to create new intellectual property protections for pharmaceutical drugs, including but not limited to patents," Sanjuan said of the deal's reported provisions. "The effects of these new obligations would limit generic competition and therefore increase the cost of medicine."

One of the general criticisms of drug regulations and patent law in many Western countries is that they prevent generic drugs from entering the market for years or even decades and otherwise stifle competition, which keep drug prices high. The pharmaceutical industry counters by arguing that firms need to be able to recoup their investments for failed as well as successful drugs so they can continue pursuing research on new medicines, and market exclusivity helps them do that.

PhRMA, its Washington trade group, has urged <http://www.phrma.org/what-the-trans-pacific-partnership-means-for-intellectual-property> the Obama administration to make intellectual property protection "a paramount goal" of the TPP deal because it would "protect American innovation and spur the continued investments in R&D that will lead to life-saving medicines and more high-paying jobs for our U.S. workers." The group also has highlighted <http://www.phrma.org/note-media-elected-officials-support-12-years-data-protection-tpp> bipartisan from members of Congress from both parties for such provisions in the pact.

Past trade deals have made Doctors Without Borders apprehensive about this one, Sanjuan said. She referenced a change that India made to its patent law <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/24/international/asia/24aids.html> in 2005 as part of its agreement to join the World Trade Organization. The country had long been a source of cheap AIDS medicine because of its robust generics market, but the 2005 law gave new drugs a patent monopoly similar to what exists in the United States. The group has since warned <http://www.msfaccess.org/sites/default/files/MSF_UTW_17th_Edition_4_b.pdf> that the law will push prices higher as it takes further hold, with the biggest effects still to come.

That history has informed the organization's involvement on TPP and put it at odds with the White House.

"MSF believes this is essential to closing the gap in access to medicines for millions of people around the world," its leaders wrote in a March letter <http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/article/trans-pacific-partnership-letter-president-united-states-america> to Obama. "The TPP could be an opportunity to make significant progress toward these goals. Instead, in its current state, the TPP is a threat to the health of millions.

 
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