It starts by looking into asking the proper question. If you are looking for risk, you will find risk. If you are looking for harm, you will find harm.
We've had the adverse reaction database reporting system, which has been very robust, since 1965. You're not going to find a credible report of a death caused by a natural health product in that entire time, which means peanut butter is dramatically more dangerous. I don't want to talk about shellfish. We just have to ask the right question: How do we get good health outcomes? Then we start measuring that.
You know, some of the leading causes of death in Canada are connected to the chemical pharmaceutical drugs. Good health policy might be that we restrict access to those until you've tried more safe treatment modalities. But we're not allowed to have that discussion. Nobody's saying there isn't risk with any type of health product, but if we're asking the question of how we can get the best health outcomes, which we've never asked, in our drug policy, we'll arrive at a reasonable place. If we then keep asking that question, we'll learn and learn and learn.
Truly, our drug regulations are there to protect intellectual property rights, not to get good health outcomes. We just have to start asking the right questions. Then we'll know what to measure.