Health Canada Challenged Over Pharma Bias

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Ottawa - The Canadian Health Authorities' proposed changes to health legislation were challenged at a national symposium organized by the Canadian Health Coalition, reports Helke Ferrie in Vitality Magazine.

Health Canada is proposing to relax the rules which pharmaceutical companies have to follow to prove the safety of their products and is getting ready to permit direct pharmaceutical advertising to consumers.

The Canadian authorities have shown pro-pharma bias on several occasions. Last year in May, member of Parliament Dr. James Lunney charged that the proposed laws for food supplements were inappropriate and too restrictive for that product category. In June Truehope, a group treating mentally ill with nutritional means, sued Health Canada for seizing shipments of its nutritional supplements.

Health Canada even went so far as to send in the Mounties to raid a call center involved with the distribution of nutrient containing products, because - according to the authorities - it is a crime to claim nutrients have positive effects on mental illness.

Some say that hiding behind these actions is a definite push from the pharmaceutical giants, who are seeing some of their mega-profits vanish when people cure themselves with nutrition, rather than becoming lucrative lifelong customers for anti-depressants and other psychiatric drugs.

The participants in the Ottawa symposium agreed on an open letter to the Prime Minister, charging Health Canada is selling out the country's most precious resource - its people - to the pharmaceutical and biochemical industries. More details in the article by Helke Ferrie:

Health Canada Sells Us Out

By Helke Ferrie
VITALITY Magazine March 2004

The blizzard that descended on central Ontario on the night of January 27th caused zero visibility, and so the course of the 401 was guesswork. With very few cars along that 500 km stretch on the road on the road to Ottawa, it was only the noise my tires made on the corrugated strip of pavement
flanking the right shoulder that enabled me to know I was on the road. Thus, it took me over ten hours to make it to Ottawa, twice the usual time.

But my destination was worth risking life and limb for a national symposium on Health Canada's proposed changes to our health protection legislation, hosted by the Canadian Health Coalition. This momentous event, attended by scientists, famous media personalities, and concerned citizens, created such a stir that it culminated in an “Open Letter to the Prime Minister” protesting the total sell-out of Canada's most precious natural resource - its people - to the pharmaceutical and biochemical industry. It was signed by hundreds of Canada's most famous people - from Margaret Atwood to David Suzuki, thousands of ordinary people like you and me, and endorsed by 26 countries. Two days later, the roads were clear and the land resplendent in glittering winter garb as I drove home and tried to digest what I had learned. It occurred to me, that instead of “It is as bad as you think, and they are out to get you”, we need a bumper sticker that reads: “They are much worse than you feared, and they have already got you.”

PROPOSED CHANGES TO FOOD AND DRUGS ACT REMOVES HEALTH AND SAFETY PROTECTIONS

Our government has decided that the Foods and Drugs Act needs renovating and informs us in a 2003 “Report on Plans and Priorities” that the act has “too narrow a focus on safety ... and does not allow for taking into account considerations other than safety and efficacy in managing health risks.” The new act is supposed to “unleash business energies” and “reduce the regulatory burden on business”, especially on the biotechnology and drug industries. Under the title “Health and Safety First”, the government published its plans to give us all “a higher level of protection” through a new act:

1 Instead of the current “duty to care” for Canadians, the act would be focused on risk management, a business concept that includes potential damage or death in its legal cost projections in the same way as a general calculates how many troops would get killed in a campaign. Even if a drug turns out to be carcinogenic (e.g. Paxil), not everybody gets cancer, so
enough money can be made from people who don't complain to make the drug cost-effective. Risk management is literally the opposite of “duty to care”, the latter does not permit conscious inclusion of dead bodies whose litigious costs can be financially managed from the drug's profits. Worst of all, according to German sociologist Ulrich Beck, the current environmental pollution caused by radiation and synthetic drugs with carcinogenic properties will be felt by people not even born yet.

2 The precautionary principle, currently in the act, would disappear; proof of harm would be transferred from the drug company to the patient. Health Canada washes its hands of the problem because all safety issues would be dealt with by the producer; no independent evaluation or human trials would be required. The drug becomes the equivalent of a person and is assumed to be innocent until proven guilty. Like corporations, which are legal entities with the status of a person but without the liability and responsibility of a person, now the drug would have that status also, and not even the government could do anything about it.

3 Health Canada would no longer be liable for anything. Nice move, given the fact that they are currently facing $ 12 billion worth of liability suits for regulatory negligence, faulty medical devices, tainted blood, as well as civil suits for harassment of their own scientists for not bending to corporate demands for approval shortcuts.

4 Direct to consumer advertising of drugs would also be permitted. According to Stephen Leacock, advertising “is the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.” The claims made in those ads would be based on nothing verifiable whatsoever. All scientific information concerning its efficacy and safety would be the “proprietary information” of that company. In the US, the sales from the 50 most advertised drugs account for 48% of the $ 20.8 billion increase in retail spending since advertising began big time in 1999 obviously an excellent business move. (From www.yourlawyer.com, Jan. 19, 2004)

The CHC's extensive critique (available on their website www.medicare.ca) asks, “Who exactly are Health Canada's clients? The people of Canada? Or the industries that Health Canada is supposed to be regulating?”

THE HUMAN COST OF BIG PHARMA'S PROFIT

So, what about the recommendations made by Justice Krever and the Romanow Report? They are gone with the wind that whistles around Parliament Hill, and thousands of Canadians died not for nothing, oh no! They made some companies very rich before they died. Both Justice Krever and Roy Romanow made it clear that the government's role is to protect the health and safety of its citizens, not to further investment interests that carry risk to health and safety. Health Canada appears to treat us as if human sickness is an infinite resource and as if people, like the environment and natural resources, don't need the application of the concept of sustainability. Consider the fact that the cost of prescription drugs in Canada increased between 1985 and 2000 a whopping 344% and that drugs alone cost the state more than fees for doctors and hospital care combined. And why are chronic disease and antibiotic-resistant illness increasing constantly, even though the population is not?

FDA records show that drug mark-ups frequently are in the 800,000 % range, but unrelated to production costs. That is because “most drug companies have a pipeline problem” (J. Surowiecki, February 16th, The New Yorker). Thus, we read there that Merck devotes three billion dollars annually to research, but has produced zero new drugs for years now. The number of available chemical molecules is limited. That leaves price increases and mergers. The joke in this industry is that “you know you are in the pharmaceutical business when you have worked for five companies in the past two years and you are still sitting at the same old desk.” They buy each other up in frantic haste to milk one more block buster drug. Surowiecki observes, “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.”

As for their effectiveness, consider that the journal Pharmacy Today reported a couple of weeks ago that in their (super-conservative) estimate at least 200,000 American die annually from drug side effects. The prestigious Johns Hopkins Medical School pegged the number at 250,000 six years ago, and the estimate for Canada is at 100,000 annually and all are avoidable. That's 959 people a day or 4,5 million people in 12 years (the Nazis killed 6 million in that period). Investigators agree that the cause is the wholesale sell-out of the regulatory system to the interests of the pharmaceutical industry.

DRUG DEATHS, LAWSUITS, AND COVER-UPS

This event was graced by stellar medical experts and internationally famous whistleblowers such as Dr.