UN Special Raporteur on right to health asked to intervene in TPP Trade negotiation http://www.bilaterals.org/spip.php?article19255

 Eleven public interest advocacy groups and three law professors have submitted a petition to Anand Grover, the Special Rapporteur for the United Nations on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health. A copy of the petition is available on the Internet here: http://www.keionline.org/node/1099 The Special Rapporteur has been asked to intervene in a new regional trade agreement named the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement. In particular, the parties filing the complaint charge that the negotiations on intellectual property norms, in terms of process and substance, threaten and violate the right of hundreds of millions of persons to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health.

The TPP agreement, is being negotiated behind a veil of secrecy, underming the ability for the persons who will be affected by the norms to participate effectively in efforts to influence the outcome of the negotiations. The lack of access to information is not universal, however, as some corporate interests have special access to information about the negotiations that is not available to the general public.A recent leak of a copy of the United States government’s proposal for a chapter on intellectual property rights has revealed the negotiation is addressing the most sensitive issues in the area of access to medicine, including such items as the standards for granting patents on medical inventions, patent extensions, the exclusive rights in regulatory test data, restrictions on the “in-transit” shipments of legitimate generic drugs, and other topics.