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E-drug: New Canadian publication on the pharmaceutical industry and
medical research
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For your interest -
Best regards,
Barbara Mintzes
Centre for Health Services and Policy Research
University of British Columbia
429 - 2194 Health Sciences Mall
Vancouver BC V6T 1Z3
bjmintzes@cs.com
News Release
DRUG INDUSTRY 'THUGS' AIM TO SILENCE RESEARCH THAT HURTS PROFITS
(Vancouver, BC, Canada )
The pharmaceutical industry is resorting to "legal thuggery" to promote
research results favourable to its own interests and to suppress those that
are not. Worse, Health Canada is failing in its duty to protect the Canadian
public, and is instead increasingly serving the interests of drug
manufacturers.
A new publication from UBC's Centre for Health Services & Policy Research
points to some disquieting realities in the modern pharmaceutical sector.
"Tales from the Other Drug Wars" is assembled from papers presented
at the 1999 annual conference, and its contributors explore how
drug-makers have successfully infiltrated and skewed the research and
drug approval process, in the service of improving not patient
health, but the health of the
corporate bottom line. A coherent industry strategy is emerging, aiming to
pressure or co-opt researchers, regulators, providers and consumers.
At the forefront of the concerns raised is how the industry agenda has come
to dominate Canada's clinical research activity. The UBC monograph notes
that critical voices in research have been singled out for oppressive
silencing tactics, in Canada and internationally. The aim is to leave
industry-sympathetic research free to develop drugs which often
provide only minor therapeutic advantage, but which can be
exaggerated into major
marketing promotions for the 'management' of industry-defined 'conditions'.
At the same time, Health Canada regulators are pulling out of any
aggressive guardianship role and allowing manufacturers to market
drugs approved under weak processes informed by industry-controlled
data. This marketing is increasingly aimed at patients, at times in
direct contravention of a Canadian law that is simply not being
enforced.
The monograph's editors note that "on the one hand, we look with
anticipation to the pharmaceutical research industry to assist in the
alleviation or elimination of the effects of some of the most devastating and
debilitating human diseases. On the other hand "all that glitters is not
gold. The industry has perfected the creation and sale of fools gold". The
dilemma for the research community, providers and the public, is how
to avoid becoming "pawns in a shell game of unprecedented magnitude,
with implications for human health that we are only beginning to
understand."
END
"Tales from the Other Drug Wars" Papers from the 1999 Annual
Conference of the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research.
Available from
www.chspr.ubc.ca, or #429 - 2194 Health Sciences Mall, UBC, Vancouver
BC V6T 1Z3 Tel: (604) 822-4969 Fax: (604) 822-5690
E-mail: jho@chspr.ubc.ca
To arrange an interview, or for further information about this release
contact:
Kim McGrail Tel: (604) 822-8044 Fax: (604) 822-1370
E-mail: kmcgrail@chspr.ubc.ca
The Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, located within
the Office of the Coordinator of Health Sciences, was established in
1990 at the
University of British Columbia. Its aim is to stimulate scientific inquiry
and provide timely research and policy advice on issues of health in
population groups, and ways in which health services may best be
organized, funded and delivered.
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