Last week, on Globe Cancer Day, the fatal greed of Big Pharma was spotlighted in unexpected ways. Smirking “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli, that had unapologetically jacked up medicine prices from $13.50 to $750 per tablet, invoked his right versus self-incrimination once hauled prior to Congress in a fraud investigation.
Meanwhile, two cancer patients – Zahara Heckscher and Hannah Lyon – were arrested at the headquarters of the Pharma lobby protesting yet another unconscionable act of Pharma greed: the ‘death sentence’ clauses the industry pushed in to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
Doctors Devoid of Borders says that the TPP would certainly be “worst-ever trade agreement for access to medicines.” If passed, the TPP would certainly lock in policies that not just permit rate gouging, however essentially require every one of TPP-signatory governments to give monopoly rights allowing drug companies to charge whatever they want. This would certainly block access to crucial life-saving medicines for several individuals Along with cancer.
I asked Zahara Heckscher, a mother, writer and breast cancer patient, to share her reasons for obtaining arrested in protest of the TPP death sentence. Her story is moving and compelling, and illustrates why members of Congress that oppose Shkreli’s actions need to additionally oppose the TPP:
I have actually advanced breast cancer. however I could be a poster kid for brand-new medical treatments. Thanks to my involvement in a clinical trial, I feel so excellent that I job part-time, volunteer on the PTA at my son’s school, and bike to my chemo appointments.
I understand every one of also well exactly what a breast cancer diagnosis means Devoid of access to these medicines. My mother was diagnosed Along with breast cancer prior to targeted cancer drugs were available. She died once I was 11 – much less Compared to a year after her diagnosis.
My son is now 10. And my clinical trial won’t last forever. That’s why I was recently arrested protesting the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP would certainly lock in policies that steer clear of some patients from accessing life-saving medicines.
One of my current cancer medicines could cost me over $100,000 if I were not in a clinical trial, since the firm that produces it has actually a monopoly on its production. Exactly how several others women could incentive from this medicine however can’t afford it?
If ratified, the TPP would certainly make this problem worse. It would certainly lock in extended monopolies for several brand-new medicines – above and beyond existing, generous patent protections. Monopolies permit drug companies to charge exorbitantly higher prices. The result: patients that can’t afford it will certainly be stuck in the poor old days once a cancer diagnosis condemned them to an early and ugly death.
The TPP has actually a section that would certainly lock in in a 5 to eight year minimum added monopoly period for biological medicines – treatments that provide chance to so several cancer patients and others Along with major illnesses.
It would certainly lock in “evergreening” policies that permit extended patents (and therefore extended monopolies on sales) for merely tweaking treatments programs for existing drugs, such as extended release pills.
And it would certainly empower foreign pharmaceutical corporations to challenge future price-regulate measures outside our courts in private, non-democratic tribunals.
If Congress passes the TPP, the net effect of every one of these provisions would certainly be to delay the production of life-saving generics and biosimilars (generics for biologicals), lock in obscenely higher prices, and lock out also several patients from the care they desperately need.
Even if you don’t have actually cancer, you would certainly most likely insight pay for monopoly drug pricing for individuals enjoy me through your insurance premiums and taxes.
Pharmaceutical companies claim that added monopoly protections in the TPP foster innovation. In fact, there’s evidence that the opposite is true. once countries were allowed to develop generic HIV medicines, the resulting innovations helped to streamline the production process, reduce prices, and save countless lives. once the Best Court nixed a monopoly on BRCA testing, companies innovated and created cost efficient tests.
TPP provisions that incentivize spending cash on legal shenanigans (enjoy filing for patent extensions on existing meds) take resources away from creating brand-new life-saving treatments. And let’s not forget that several of today’s innovative medicines were created through public funding from the National Institutes of Healthiness (NIH), universities, and private donations.
About one from eight women in this country will certainly grab breast cancer. Members of Congress need to look their wives, mothers, sisters, daughters and granddaughters in the eye.
Then they need to vote versus the TPP.
Zahara Heckscher is a mother, writer, breast cancer patient, and “Cancer Thriver” living in Washington, D.C. Her current treatment involves chemotherapy and palbociclib. She was arrested in Atlanta at the TPP negotiations in 2015, and again in Washington, D.C., on February 4, 2016, Globe Cancer Day, protesting for access to cancer medicines.
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