B.C. Premier Christy Clark and her senior ministers are using every tactic in the book to avoid any sort of public disclosure of what happened behind the scenes when eight health researchers were illegitimately fired, one after the other, in the fall of 2012.
As a family physician for nearly 40 years, I have watched the pharmaceutical industry infiltrate into political and regulatory structures, as part of the general corporatization of society. What the Liberal government is now doing is simply one more example of how bought-and-sold officials sustain this pernicious process.
The voices resisting exposure include three ministers of health — Mike de Jong, Margaret MacDiarmid and the current minister, Terry Lake — all of whom claim, in chorus, and for various patently irrelevant reasons, that the matter is settled and no further investigation is needed.
When one of the slandered researchers, University of Victoria PhD student Roderick MacIsaac, sadly committed suicide shortly after his firing, pressure on the government began to build. Not only was his death an unmitigated tragedy, but the subject of his thesis — Premier Clark’s publicly touted smoking cessation program, which included the drug varenicline (brand name Champix®), a product increasingly associated with severe adverse effects — threatened to challenge the intimate relationship between the BC Liberal government and the pharmaceutical industry.
This tragic fallout from the firings eventually compelled the government, two years later, to deliver a public “apology” through current Minister of Health Terry Lake for Rod MacIsaac’s death. The statement is a masterpiece of rigorously neutral bafflegab: “The government also expresses sympathy and condolences for the stress and sadness that (Mr. MacIsaac’s family) have endured as a result of Mr. MacIsaac's death in December, 2012." The influence of the government’s legal advisors drips from every decontextualized word.
The relationship between the BC Liberals and Big Pharma had already been clearly mapped out years ago, with the formation of the Pharmaceutical Task Force, whose nine members were dominated by drug industry representatives, including — astonishingly — Russell Williams, “president of Canada's Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (Rx&D), a national lobby group with members from some 50 drug companies and whose directors include the presidents, CEOs and other top officials from 14 of the country’s biggest drug manufacturers," The Tyee reported in 2007.
When the report of this body was finally released, it became clear that its primary purpose was to either destroy or severely limit an organization that had become a thorn in Big Pharma’s side. This was the UBC-based Therapeutics Initiative, a research body with a stellar international reputation for cutting through drug industry hype and delivering accurate information about drug effectiveness and hazards. It was, for example, the first group to question the safety of Vioxx, which was eventually taken off the market in 2004 because of severe harm to the heart.
Its withdrawal also caused $28 billion damage to the bottom line of its manufacturer Merck.
Christy Clark is using every political and legal tool at her disposal to cover up what really happened since the fall of 2012. The public needs to know if the premier's longstanding support for the bottom line of the drug industry and resulting hostility toward industry critics influenced these firings.
The most sinister and alarming aspect of this cover-up is the fact that the provincial government has repeatedly used a lie to fend off calls for disclosure.
Over and over again, senior government officials claimed that details of the firings could not be revealed, because the RCMP was carrying out an investigation of what happened.
But there never was any RCMP investigation.
Alleging that such an investigation was taking place, it is now clear, was a deliberately fabricated smokescreen, thrown up by elected officials determined to turn the bright light of public scrutiny away from the dark truths of their own machinations.
There is far more at stake in the government’s stonewalling than revelations about a botched investigation and its tragic outcome.
The context for this debacle clearly suggests that the relationship between Big Pharma and Christy Clark and her ministers is obscured by government obstructionism.
The only suitable outcome in this matter is for an outraged citizenry to exert relentless pressure on the provincial government, compelling it to come clean and allow the real story to be told.
Anything less will be a perversion of natural justice, and a continuation of business — big business — as usual.
Original Article
Source: vancouverobserver.com/
Author: Warren Bell
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