Health committee  Okay, but let's take those two first. They are what we would call astroturf organizations. There's a clear strategy by the public relations companies working for the manufacturers to create patient groups to give their imprimatur of respectability to this kind of thing. In terms

Health committee  I think that opening the door to DTCA is a very bad idea. You can take the experience in the U.S. with Vioxx, for example, one of the most widely prescribed drugs in the history of the world. The uptake of that drug was huge, and the impact on the population, as we've seen, was d

Health committee  The reality is that physicians have information overload. People want them to have electronic devices, and patient records at the press of a button. Putting something on top of that like mandatory reporting, in the experience in other countries, is simply not going to happen. So

Health committee  First let me clarify that we don't study cholesterol-lowering drugs at the University of Victoria. There have been 14 major studies of the major cholesterol-lowering drugs. Why are they still being used? The answer is complex, but you might want to read the first chapter of my bo

Health committee  By all means, they're being manipulated.

Health committee  That's a very good question. So the question is about the logos of the various patient organizations on this ad. Have you ever heard of Making the Connection? Does anyone know what that is? How about the Canadian Lipid Nurse Network?

Health committee  Yes, it's an easy answer. I would say, absolutely, they need to be two separate functions. The group that approves and regulates the airline industry is not the same group that goes and inspects the crash sites and looks for the black boxes after they crash. We set that up for a

Health committee  It's a very good question. That goes back to Ms. Kadis's point: how interested are we in speed? I would ask all the committee members to imagine themselves undergoing surgery where someone is taking out a tumour, or a uterus, and so on, and the surgeon is standing in the operat

Health committee  I'm sorry, but my military college French is not very good.

Health committee  Then I will speak in English. I have a couple of points. When you said that some drugs are harmless and some drugs are dangerous, I think I would want to correct that to say that there's no such thing as a dangerous drug.

Health committee  Sure, there's the advertising, but the drugs themselves are inert in the sense that it's how they're used that influences whether they're being used wisely and safely or incorrectly and dangerously. In terms of drug advertising, such as erectile dysfunction drugs and so on, wha

Health committee  If I understand the question correctly, it is about what can be done so that these advertisements don't pop up in other media. Currently we receive a lot of direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals from the United States in magazines and so on. We have the ability to b

Health committee  Thank you very much for having me here. I'm surprised there's no snow here. Usually when I come to Ottawa, I like to gloat about how difficult it is back in Victoria, where we're wading through the cherry blossoms and the daffodils. My name is Alan Cassels. When I told my famil