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BC Liberals prioritize pharmaceutical profits over public health
Submitted by jacob on Thu, 05/29/2008 - 14:44
The BC Liberals last year commissioned a pharmaceutical task force to study the BC Medical system. The task force was made up mostly of pharmaceutical industry lobbyists, with a 5/9 majority on the task force committee. The chair of the task force sits on the board of LifeSciences BC, a pharmaceutical industry lobby group.
On May 23, the task force released it's recommendations, including ending the use of generic drugs and the removal of the independent Therapeutics Initiative (TI) research group which approves drugs to be paid for by the provincial government.
It is no wonder then that the task force recommended against the use of generic drugs. Generic drugs are chemically identical to brand-name drugs, but they cost less, this is because the patents on the drugs have expired, meaning any company can manufacture them. Pharmaceutical companies have been battling generic drugs for years, attempting to lengthen patents terms and using legal manipulation to keep generics off the market. Generic drugs save the province and citizens millions of dollars every year and are just as effective as name-branded drugs.
Pharmaceutical companies spend millions lobbying against generic drugs. Recently, the Harper government extended patent lengths to pharmaceutical companies because a Supreme Court decision prevented them from employing illegal tactics to lengthen those patents. The government did this to compensate the pharmaceutical companies for profits lost as a result of not being able to employ the illegal tactics. The drugs include Viagra, whose patent was set to expire, and Lipitor, a cholesterol drug, and the most prescribed drug in Canada. The cost of this decision to taxpayers is estimated at over $2 Billion dollars. The fact that Tony Clement, the health minister who made this decision, owns 25% of a pharmaceutical company, apparently has nothing to do with this gift to the pharmaceutical industry in Canada.
The attack by the pharmaceutical industry on the Therapeutics Initiative is another example of profit taking at the expense of public health. The TI operates out of the University of British Columbia, and is made up of 60 independent researchers and experts. Since the foundation of the TI the province has saved over 600 lives and an estimated $50 Million per year in drug costs. Currently, the TI is made up of independent researchers and experts. The BC Liberals government, which receives 2/3rd of it's donations from big business, will modify the TI to include “stakeholders”, that is likely to be representatives of the very companies which manufacture and profit from the drugs in question.
The attack on the Therapeutics Initiative is about industry profits. The TI has a history of critically examining drugs before committing the government to pay for them. The TI saved hundreds of lives by refusing to recommend Vioxx, a painkiller which was eventually pulled from the market for increasing the risk of heart-attack and stroke. The counter example held up by the province, is Herceptin, a breast-cancer drug whose approval was fast-tracked; it turns out though that the TI was correct, not the province. The company that manufactures Herceptin inflated the results of studies and only published positive studies; they created the impression that herceptin was 3x more effective than it actually is. The province ended up wasting money on Herceptin.
No public committee or task force should include anyone standing to make a profit from the outcome of the committee, this situation is often referred to as a Conflict of Interest.
The BC Liberal Government needs to stop handing oversight powers to the very companies to be overseen. This is a tactic of the Bush administration which has seen Oil companies in charge of environmental regulations. British Columbians deserve independent advice, from unbiased sources, not marketing from Liberal party donors.
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