Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
Med J Aust. 2011 Jan 17;194(2):83-6. doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2011.tb04174.x.
Four formal rounds of Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) negotiations took place in 2010. They involved over 200 officials from Australia, the United States, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Brunei, Peru, Vietnam and Malaysia. Future negotiations officially are set to include three issues with public health and medicines policy implications for Australia and our region: ways to approach regulatory coherence and transparency; how to benefit multinational and small-medium enterprises; and multilateral investor-state dispute settlement. US-based multinational pharmaceutical companies are lobbying for TPPA provisions like those in the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, which reduce government cost-effectiveness regulatory control of pharmaceuticals, threatening equitable access to medicines. They also advocate increased TPPA intellectual monopoly privilege protection, which will further limit the development of Australian generic medicine enterprises and restrict patient access to cheap, bioequivalent prescription drugs. Of particular concern is that proposed TPPA multilateral investor-state dispute settlement procedures would allow US corporations (as well as those of other TPPA nations) to obtain damages against Australian governments through international arbitral proceedings if their investments are impeded by Australian public health and environment protection legislation.
跨太平洋伙伴关系协定（TPPA）进行了四轮正式谈判。2010 年，来自澳大利亚、美国、新西兰、智利、新加坡、文莱、秘鲁、越南和马来西亚的 200 多名官员参与了谈判。未来的谈判正式确定将包括三个与澳大利亚和本地区公共卫生和药品政策相关的问题：如何实现监管一致性和透明度的方法；如何使跨国公司和中小企业受益；以及多边投资者与国家争端解决机制。总部设在美国的跨国制药公司正在游说 TPPA 条款，如澳大利亚-美国自由贸易协定中的条款，这些条款削弱了政府对药品的成本效益监管控制，威胁到公平获得药品的机会。他们还主张增加 TPPA 知识产权垄断特权保护，这将进一步限制澳大利亚仿制药企业的发展，并限制患者获得廉价、生物等效的处方药物。特别令人担忧的是，拟议的 TPPA 多边投资者与国家争端解决程序将允许美国公司（以及其他 TPPA 国家的公司）如果其投资受到澳大利亚公共卫生和环境保护立法的阻碍，通过国际仲裁程序对澳大利亚政府获得损害赔偿。
