Thank you all for being here.
I don't know about the rest of the MPs, but certainly my email inbox was inundated with complaints about this law. I received all kinds of postcards, and I have to say I'm a little perplexed as to why. I understand to a certain extent why, but certainly for parts of it it's hard to see why you wouldn't be advocating for it. My understanding is that previously Vanessa's Law, which requires hospitals and producers to report on the adverse effects of drugs, didn't apply to natural health products, but this is changing that.
I wanted to ask you a bit about the adverse effects of some medications, and I looked it up. With some of them, there can be interactions. For example, St. John's wort can interact with SSRIs —which are treatments for depression—and cause serotonin syndrome, which can be deadly. With regard to hepatotoxicity, there's a whole bunch of drugs implicated in that, particularly drugs in a class of pyrrolizidine alkaloids and ayurvedic medications that have it, such as comfrey and echinacea. Gingko biloba has antiplatelet, antithrombotic properties, so it interacts with Coumadin, NSAIDs and Aspirin.
I have another one here that I wrote down, from the Canadian Medical Association Journal this summer, August 2023. It had a case report of somebody presenting with lead toxicity. They eventually found out that the lead was coming from ayurvedic medicine the person was taking in order to try to get pregnant. They stopped it and she got better, but Public Health Ontario looked into ayurvedic medications and found one in which 13% of the content was lead.
First, do you agree with some of these? I don't believe my saying it is going to get it entered into the record. Secondly, have people been complaining? Have producers of naturopathic medications actually been complaining about having to report serious adverse effects, and have doctors been complaining? I find it hard to believe that people would actually complain about having to report such things. Am I wrong? Are they not complaining?