Health committee  I invite you to come to British Columbia. You are always welcome there.

Health committee  I don't have an ideological view on this, but I'll give you a specific example of what the problem has been with one drug. Gabapentin is a drug brand-named Neurontin that was promoted for chronic “neuropathic pain”. It became a $3-billion-a-year blockbuster in the U.S. in about

Health committee  It's a very good question. I think part of the answer goes back to remarks I read in a transcript of an earlier hearing, I think by Dr. Eyolfson, that the level of education about drugs of Canadian medical students and doctors has declined drastically in the last 20 or 30 years

Health committee  I just thought they're such important questions that Ms. Harder and her colleagues were asking. I think the real goal in the interests of the people of Canada is that a national program provides better outcomes, with adequate and possibly better choices in some environments, and

Health committee  Well, it's a good example of an area where conflict of interest gets in the way of a real understanding and science. Our academic group still feels that statins in secondary prevention for people who already have had heart disease or stroke probably have—

Health committee  In primary prevention, for someone like me, for example, who has relatively high cholesterol but is otherwise fit, we think that the overall harms may well exceed the benefits. There's no question. I'm sure you've seen this as well, as has Dr. Carrie, probably. Anyone who has b

Health committee  This is the Canadian Medical Association Journal for November 1, 2016. I'm happy to circulate it, but I'd love to have it back because I still haven't read the article.

Health committee  Can I do it unofficially?

Health committee  I appreciate the question, but it might be better if I answered in English. I'm a recovering politician, as Mike Harcourt would say, so I've been on both sides of this issue, and I'm proud to be a good specialist physician. Doctors are trained and socialized, as nurses will know

Health committee  It's all around, yes, and having been an elected person and dealing with the first very strict conflict-of-interest law in British Columbia, which arose because of obvious corruption, I got used to it. When I came back to the university, I realized that my former colleagues aren'

Health committee  Yes. Thank you for the question. We have a desperate need. I was showing one of my medical students an obviously conflicted opinion on opioids from the Mayo Clinic Proceedings journal in 2009, which sounds like a very prestigious journal. It's an article obviously ghostwritten,

Health committee  We've learned a lot in British Columbia about the value of independence, and we learned that someone who has no stake, who has no conflicts, and is not allowed to hold conflicts will inevitably make a different judgment over the facts than someone who has been compromised. The

Health committee  Thank you for the question. Remember that pricing is partly under the control of the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, which has been a pussycat throughout its history. To the best of my knowledge, it has never exerted any serious attempt to control drug prices in Canada.

Health committee  It's the National Institute of Clinical Excellence.

Health committee  I think I agree with that. I don't purport to have expertise in this, but I was a provincial cabinet minister at one point in my life and I'm familiar with some of the difficulties. I think the problem now is that the industry plays provinces off each other. I'm sure you're awa