Life,Death and the TPPA. Hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders will suffer needlessly and some will die if New Zealand signs up to the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement in its leaked form. Thats what I take from reading articles like the one by Dr Erik Monasterio and Deborah Gleeson Ph D in the New Zealand Medical Journal and the Australian and New Zealand Journal Of Psychiatry which looks at the impact the Trans Pacific Partnership could have on people suffering severe mental illness. anp.sagepub/content/early/2014/10/31/0004867414557679 The huge mult-inational pharmaceutical companies hate Pharmac ( the Crown Agency which keeps the costs of our medicines low in our country by astute purchasing) and they want to use the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement to attack it. The spin put out by the PR lobbyists on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies is that it costs a lot of money to develop medicines and they need to make more profit from sales. The first part of that claim is true - it does cost a lot of money to develop new medicines , but the second part does not stand scrutiny . If Pharmac was really preventing overseas pharmaceutical companies from making sufficient profit from their products in our country, they wouldnt bother to try and sell them in New Zealand at all. No. This is a trade deal like no previous one. This deal is driven by corporate greed. So what can we do? Well for one thing you could email Trade Minister Hon Tim Groser (who is negotiating the trade deal) and include the link to the above paper at the following email address. Tim Groser can be reached at: [email protected] You could express your concern and seek his assurance that he will not sign the TPPA agreement if it includes provisions that could incase the cost of medicines in our country or impinge on our sovereign right to make our own laws. You could send similar emails to Minister of Health Jonathan Coleman at [email protected] John Key and Steven Joyce [email protected] [email protected] And of course contact your local MP Kia Kaha #bryanbruce #timgroser #tppa #tppanoway #saynototppa
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 08:35:48 +0000
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