Therapeutic Products Bill is rushed legislation that reeks of Corporate Consultant Interference

Warnings patients will die if new Government Bill passes, law expert says it’s being rushed through

A terminally ill mum-of-two is pleading with the Government to reassess proposed legislation that will make it illegal for her to access life-extending medication. 

Patient Voice Aotearoa said if the Therapeutic Products Bill is not changed, it will not only cost lives but stop the media and advocates from publically advertising unfunded treatments.

Theresa Zame is terminally ill. 

Last June, she was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and was told she had just nine months to live. 

“All the things that you had planned for life, that’s all going to change and some of them aren’t going to happen, it’s hard,” Zame said.

But since taking the medication tagrix, she said the cancer, which had spread to her liver, has gone and the tumour in her left lung has shrunk. 

“It’s completely changed my life,” Zame said.

Tagrix, a generic version of the AstraZeneca drug tagrisso, is not funded or registered in New Zealand. So Zame accesses it from Bangladesh via a prescription from her oncologist. 

Tagrix costs $1000 a month and tagrisso costs $10,000.

“We just don’t have those sorts of funds,” Zame said.

But under the proposed Therapeutic Products Bill – which will replace the dated 1981 Medicines Act – it will be illegal for patients like Zame to privately import medication via the mail. 

“If this legislation goes through, those patients will not be able to receive those medicines. As a result – in some instances – those patients will die,” Patient Voice Aotearoa chair Malcolm Mulholland said.

Patient Voice Aotearoa believes thousands of patients will be impacted by the Bill, which has passed its first reading. 

Mulholland is concerned about a number of clauses including the broad definition of the term “advertisement”.

He said it will make it illegal for patients to publically advertise unfunded treatments like creating a Givealittle page or speaking to the media. 

“That is the means by which they raise awareness, by which politicians give Pharmac more funding,” Mulholland said. 

“It’s just a form of censorship that I think most New Zealanders will find abhorrent.”

Patient Voice Aotearoa chair Malcolm Mulholland is a fucking legend. He has stood for the sick and the ill, losing his own partner and then diagnosing with cancer himself.

He is a spectacular defender of human rights and has championed against the health inequalities so prevent in our public health system.

If he says it it bad. It is bad!

When Professor Jane Kelly says it is bad, it is bad!

Those proceedings continued on Wednesday with the proposed Bill drawing criticism from a range of agencies. 

“It is one of the worst examples that I have seen of legislation being rushed through,” Auckland University law Professor Jane Kelsey said.

“We have sought much more clarity,” Health Select Committee chair Dr Tracey McLellan said. “It’s absolutely on our radar.”

…we now know the extent of corporate lobbying in the construction of policy to benefit themselves.

Ensuring market monopolies isn’t a public health measure, it’s a corporate health measure.

This isn’t about your well being and health, this is about pharmaceutical profit margins.

This Bill must be halted and if the Greens have finished starting wars with white cis males, could they please demand Labour put the brakes on this now!

It is outrageous this bill has gotten this far!

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