New York Times: Don’t Trade Away Our Health
Joseph E. Stiglitz, professor at Columbia University and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers

“…Representatives from the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries convened [last week] to decide the future of their trade relations in the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). … What’s clear is that the overall thrust of the intellectual property section of the TPP is for less competition and higher drug prices. The effects will go beyond the 12 TPP countries. Barriers to generics in the Pacific will put pressure on producers of such drugs in other countries, like India, as well. … The efforts to raise drug prices in the TPP take us in the wrong direction. The whole world may come to pay a price in the form of worse health and unnecessary deaths” (1/30).