Secrecy & Conflict of Interest
..."Government officials everywhere hide vital information that they think might embarrass them, their departments or their political leaders,
...in large part due to excessive concerns about the commercial interests of the drug companies."...
Health Canada hides under the guise of low resources which are used mostly to protect their pharma buddies. Their secret mandate under pretense of public safety is to squash competition from generally safe and healthy cost effective alternatives.
Its simple: when you have secrecy you have a secret mandate and when research is funded by vested interests you have a conflict. So those who defend secrecy and research funding from vested interested are just 'following the money' and nothing more.
It is surprising, how often we let our governments and university/hospital officials get away with these most obvious conflicts. It has been said that if a lie is repeated enough, we will start to believe it - brain washing anyone?
More and more it is turning out that greed (Adam Smith not withstanding) and secrecy supposedly antithetical to democracy are now it's cornerstones!
Chris Gupta
See also:
Roots of Medical & Other Monopolies
Corruption In Courts Is Too Entrenched
Health Canada cloaked in secrecy
Canadian Press
POSTED AT 10:15 PM EDT Sunday, May. 9, 2004
Vancouver Health Canada has been deemed the country's most secretive government department by the Canadian Association of Journalists.
The department was awarded the CAJ's annual Code of Silence Award at the association's annual conference on Saturday night.
Government officials everywhere hide vital information that they think might embarrass them, their departments or their political leaders, CAJ president Paul Schneidereit said in announcing the dubious prize in a release.
This award honours their efforts to shroud open government.
The Health Department did not immediately return calls for comment on Sunday.
According to the CAJ, over a period of more than five years, Health Canada denied any meaningful access to a database of prescription drugs that could harm or even kill Canadians.
The department refused to release information on adverse drug reactions in a format that would allow researchers to study the records electronically in order to spot trends and identify which drugs are causing problems.
For more than five years, the department would only release the information in a computer format that prevented deeper analysis.
Meanwhile, similar data on adverse drug reactions is readily available in the U.S. In fact, the Food and Drug Administration routinely makes such data available on its website.
The parliamentary all-party standing committee on health eventually slammed the department for failing to effectively protect Canadians who take prescription drugs.
The committee said the manner in which drugs are tested and approved is too secretive, in large part due to excessive concerns about the commercial interests of the drug companies.
Health Canada finally relented more than five years after it was challenged.
This year's other nominees were the New Brunswick Department of Health and Wellness, the RCMP, the government of Alberta, and the city council of Charlottetown.
See also:
posted by Chris Gupta on Thursday May 13 2004
updated on Saturday September 24 2005URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2004/05/13/secrecy_conflict_of_interest.htm
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