AllTheStudiesThat
FitVille
The Therapeutics Initiative is a made in British Columbia academic consortium (i.e. it is independent of pharma) that does meta-analyses of drug studies to determine if drugs actually work (or don't).
It is thus an operation that has saved both the money and the lives of British Columbians for some time now.
So.
Why is the TI more valuable now than ever?
Well...
Because, as the TorStar has found, it turns out that Health Canada is doing similar studies but is not releasing the findings.
Actually, it is worse than that because Health Canada is even making it almost impossible to find out what drugs it is actually studying.
And what does FedCon Health Minister Rona Ambrose have to say about all of this?
You guessed it:
...During a stop in Toronto earlier this week to visit St. Joseph’s Health Center, Ambrose told the Star she was unaware that an annual list of drug reviews completed by Health Canada wasn’t publicly available.
“We will look into that,” she said. “If the lists are not available, I will ask the department why that is the case. The commitment they’ve made to me is to support this level of transparency. We will continue to endeavour to be more and more transparent. We want to hear feedback from people,” she said...
Surprised?
________
Of course, because the TI is so good at what it does the Knotty Gordians and the Snooklandians both, essentially, killed it...
Of courser, always ready to seize absolutely any PR victory from the codswallop filling their own spleens, the Snooklandians then played the public for suckers when they took credit for resurrecting the thing they had just killed...
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Saturday, July 05, 2014
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2 comments:
It is not just Liberal and Conservative Parties that are beholden to Big Pharma. The corporate media, protecting its own financial interests, kills reports that criticize the legal drug industry.
In April 2013, the Globe and Mail quoted Alan Cassels, a respected researcher,
"A wide range of drugs, including cholesterol-lowering statins, proton-pump inhibitors for heartburn and testosterone gels, are routinely overused, according to Alan Cassels, a pharmaceutical policy researcher at the University of Victoria."
Around the same time, G&M published Cassel's review of Ben Goldacre's book, Ben Goldacre and big pharma's big betrayal .
That was the end of Alan Cassels at the Toronto's national newspaper. Responding to pushback from the industry, Cassels was deemed unwelcome.
Thanks Norm.
Those with an interest in the subject can follow Dr. Cassels on the Twittmachine...His snippets are often informative.
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