Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement could restrict access to affordable, life-saving drugs

In this post in the PLoS "Speaking of Medicine" blog, Judit Rius Sanjuan, a lawyer from Barcelona, Spain, and the U.S. manager of the Access Campaign at Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), says the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a regional trade agreement that currently involves 11 countries but is slated for further expansion across the Asia-Pacific region, is threatening the prospects for an AIDS-free generation. "Negotiations are being conducted in secret, but leaked drafts of the agreement outline U.S. aggressive intellectual property (IP) demands that that could severely restrict access to affordable, life-saving medicines for millions of people," she writes, concluding, "At this pivotal moment in the fight against AIDS, when the scientific, medical and policy tools needed to reverse the epidemic are finally at hand, ... the U.S. government's demands in the TPP will threaten so much of what has been achieved so far, and will make the vision of an AIDS-free generation impossible, or at least much more expensive" (8/7).