Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.
I am here to speak against the appointment of Dr. Bernard Prigent. Understanding the limits on the committee's jurisdiction, I will restrict my comments to the appointee's qualifications and competence to perform the duties of a member of CIHR's governing council.
Those who endorse this appointment point to innovation and commercialization mandates for CIHR and argue that according to these criteria, Dr. Prigent is eminently qualified. However, this misses three critical points.
First, Dr. Prigent's ability to bring his expertise in innovation and commercialization to the GC table is fatally limited by the fact that he is currently a Vice-President at Pfizer. A qualified candidate must not only have certain knowledge and skills but must also be able to use his knowledge and skills. This is a significant problem for Dr. Prigent.
To avoid both real and apparent conflicts of interests, he will need to recuse himself from all discussions and votes on innovation and commercialization in the pharmaceutical sector that have the potential to conflict or appear to conflict with the interests of Pfizer. For example, one of the jobs of the GC is to establish and terminate institutes. Pfizer's interests would definitely conflict with the public interest in a decision about whether to terminate an institute like the Institute of Health Services and Policy Research. That institute supports the kind of research that might show that a Pfizer drug is dangerous, identify the problems of ghost-writing by pharma, or argue for a change to the Canadian patent regime to make the production of cheaper generic drugs easier. To be ethical, Dr. Prigent will need to recuse himself from so many discussions as to not be able to be an active contributing member of the GC.
Second, commercialization is not CIHR's objective. Rather, it is but one means for realizing CIHR's objective, which is, in fact, “the creation of new knowledge and its translation into improved health for Canadians, more effective health services and products and a strengthened Canadian health care system”.
Third, not only are innovation and commercialization only a means to CIHR's objective, but they are not the only nor the most important of CIHR's statutorily mandated means of achieving its objective. The CIHR Act requires CIHR to meet its objective by, among other things, “promoting, assisting and undertaking research that meets the highest international scientific standards of excellence and ethics”. By contrast, “encouraging innovation, facilitating the commercialization of health research” is but one of 12 means available to CIHR.
Therefore, the criteria against which we must assess the qualifications of the appointee are not only innovation and commercialization; we must also ask whether Dr. Prigent is competent and qualified to pursue CIHR's objective. And is Dr. Prigent competent and qualified to pursue that objective using the prescribed means of the highest international scientific standards of excellence and ethics? It is here that this appointee's record does not withstand close scrutiny.
To be confident that the appointee is competent and qualified to meet the scientific excellence and ethics criteria for this position, we need to know that he does not endorse the actions of his employer where scientific excellence and ethics have been compromised. There being no public criticism by Dr. Prigent of Pfizer's and pharma's conduct in either of these realms, it is reasonable to assume that Dr. Prigent has adopted Pfizer's and pharma's culture and priorities.
With respect to scientific standards of excellence, one can point to the well-documented cases of selective positive reporting of the results of research studies. With respect to the improved health of Canadians, one can point to the health harms associated with Bextra and Celebrex. With respect to ethics, one can point to the fact that Pfizer recently agreed to a $2.3 billion settlement, including a $1.2 billion criminal fine, in relation to Bextra and other of its drugs.
Until Dr. Prigent criticizes all of this in a public forum, it is reasonable to conclude that he is neither competent nor qualified to sit on CIHR's GC.
Let me put it another way. Even if appointing a senior executive from Pfizer might serve some of the means of achieving the objective set out under the CIHR Act—namely, the innovation and commercialization means—unless he or she has publicly dissociated himself or herself from Pfizer's and pharma's misconduct, as Dr. Prigent has not, it actively undermines other means, most obviously those having to do with the highest international standards of scientific excellence and the highest international standards of ethics.
This appointment cannot--