Lévis, le 9 novembre 1998

Très Honorable Premier Ministre Monsieur Jean Chrétien.

Monsieur le Premier Ministre

01:Qui décide dans mon pays si tel ou tel médicament sera mis sur le marché canadien?

02:Qui décide des critères d’acceptations de ces dits médicaments?

03:Pour quelles raisons les six scientifiques ont-ils rencontré le Sénat et non les membres de votre gouvernement ainsi que tous les élus du peuple canadien.

04:Est-il vrai que des scientifiques ont été menacés d’être amenés en court s’ils ne passaient pas les médicaments de telle où telle compagnie.

05:Est-il vrai qu’ils doivent modifier leurs critères d’acceptations dû aux menaces de leurs supérieurs.

06:Est-ce que quelqu’un de votre entourage consomme des médicaments approuvés par Santé Canada?

07:Se sentent-ils en sécurité à la suite d’un tel article?

08:Est-ce que moi, je dois me sentir en sécurité, puisque je dois consommer au moins dix ( 10 ) médicaments pour rester en vie? ( Problèmes cardiaques )

09:Qu’entendez-vous faire pour arrêter ce scandale?

10:Va-t-on revivre le même scandale que le sang contaminé?

11:Va-t-on revivre le même scandale que la Somalie.

12:Sommes nous en présence du même phénomène que la talédomide?

13:Pourquoi en 1992 le ministère de la santé a-t-il demandé aux compagnies qui produisaient des Implants Mammaires utilisant la Silicone de faire la preuve de la sécurité de ces implants, et n’avait toujours pas reçu d’accusé de réception en 1997 de ces mêmes compagnies.

14:Pourquoi le ministère de la santé fait-il passer l’argent avant la sécurité du peuple canadien.

15:Va-t-on congédier les six ( 6 ) scientifiques de la même façon que l’on a congédié M. Pierre Blais Phd. en 1989 ( Voir la Presse 30 juillet 89 ) . Congédié pour avoir mis en garde contre des prothèses mammaires? Je crois avoir posé assez de questions pour le moment.

Je voudrais citer ici ce que mon père, l’avocat J. A. Lambert conseiller de la Reine et du ministère du travail du Québec se plaisait de dire, ‘’La seule raison qu’un gouvernement est au pouvoir est de prendre soin de ses enfants’’.

Prenez-vous soin de vos enfants dans le scandale sur la santé?

Je vous félicite pour votre geste humanitaire que vous avez posé dans le cas des bombes anti-personnelles.

Il serait grand temps que vous posiez le même geste pour vos enfants dans le cas de la santé.

Monsieur Le Premier Ministre, vous vous devez d’ouvrir une enquête publique sur les agissements de certaines personnes qui travaillent au sein de Santé Canada.

Qui contrôle Santé Canada?

Qui gouverne mon peuple?

Qui prend les intérêts de mon peuple?

Autant de questions auxquelles je désirerais recevoir des réponses claires et précises.

En tant que Canadien à part entière je suis en droit de recevoir ces réponses.

Je vous remercie de prendre quelques minutes de votre temps que je sais très précieux pour lire ma lettre.

Au plaisir de vous lire sous peu,

PS : Vous sentez-vous en sécurité à la lecture de cette lettre?

If money is the root of all evil, something sinister is stalking Canadian scientists searching for the next miracle drug.

In October, six researchers at Canada's health department, fed up with constant pressure to hurry drug reviews and ignore safety concerns, marched into a Senate hearing and aired Health Canada's considerable dirty laundry.

The scientists said they were pressured by their managers and bribed by chemical giant Monsanto Co. <MTC.N> to approve the company's genetically engineered cow hormone, rBST. St. Louis-based Monsanto said the money was to oversee studies.

Another Health Canada reviewer said she was told she would be sued by drug manufacturer Hoechst Canada, a unit of Germany's Hoechst AG <HOEG.F>, if she continued to delay the approval of the company's growth hormone Revalor-H.

The scientists detailed incidents in which controversial files at the agency had been shredded, stolen and locked up, allegedly to protect the interests of the corporate clients.

Shiv Chopra, a 64-year-old reviewer with 30 years service at the department, said he could remain silent no longer. "The department is saying all over the place that the client -- and this is in writing -- the client now is the industry and we have to serve the client...We just are unable to deal with it any more," he told the Senate committee.

The revelations came just as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police confirmed it was investigating possible wrongdoing in Health Canada's 1982 approval of the Meme silicone breast implant. The implant was taken off the market in 1991 after it was found to contain a suspected cancer-causing agent.

Allegations that industry influence pervades Canada's health department came as no surprise to Dr. Michele Brill-Edwards, who in 1996 left her senior review job there.

She said industry executives have quick and easy access to cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats who respond to the industry's "incessant agitation" for drug approvals. "It creates an untenable tension for a reviewer who has genuine unanswered questions about safety," she said.

Now an Ottawa pediatrician, Brill-Edwards said Canadian scientists want to report the truth but fear reprisals from the powerful corporations who fund Canadian research. "The (industry) can destroy people if they try," she said.

The race for the next Viagra -- or a cure for AIDS -- has created an industry driven by the promise of profit and fame. But every search for a cure begins with a quest for funding.

To discover insulin in 1921, Frederick Banting approached the University of Toronto and requested lab space, a research assistant, 10 dogs, and eight weeks.

Modern medicine has grown a bit more complex -- and a whole lot more costly. According to the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of Canada, it now takes an average of 10 to 15 years and over C$700 million to develop a new drug.

Canada's cash-strapped Medical Research Council, which provides the bulk of government funding for research, has nowhere near that kind of money.

The council's budget dropped 13 percent in four years, to C$235 million in 1996. It has since been replenished to C$267 million a year, but Canada still has the lowest funded research agency in the OECD.

By contrast, the manufacturers association, which represents about 90 percent of drug companies in Canada, said its members will be spending C$1 billion annually by 2000.

"The problem we got in Canada is that there is so little public investment in medical research -- you've got a 4-to-1 ratio of private-sector investment compared to public-sector investment," pharmaceutical association spokesman Chris Ward said, adding that the ratio in the United States is about 1-to-1.

Health Minister Allan Rock dismissed the suggestion that companies like Monsanto have undue influence by pointing out that rBST has been under review for nine years. "If someone is exerting pressure, they are not very effective," Rock told the House of Commons. But the nine-year battle over the synthetic hormone, which received U.S. approval in 1993, may be nearing an end. Stymied by its own reviewers, Health Canada has appointed two outside panels to study rBST safety, a move the National Farmers Union calls "an end run around the science reviewers."

The impartiality of the panels has already come into question. The head of one panel, Dr. Stuart MacLeod, has worked as a consultant for Monsanto's pharmaceutical unit, Searle. His wife worked for Searle for 15 years until last December. MacLeod said there is no conflict of interest.

"There is nobody in this country who's knowledgeable about these issues who hasn't had some dealings with the pharmaceutical industry," MacLeod said.

And that appears to be the problem. Brill-Edwards said the industry is a giant revolving door of scientists who may need to be in industry's good books to get future funding.

"It's very difficult to separate your work today from what it may be in the future -- so there is a constant concern on the part of the people in drug development that they keep their options open. It's a kind of inherent conflict of interest." Industry ties go beyond the public sector. Universities, hospitals and private, nonprofit agencies all work with the drug industry at one level or another.

At Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, Dr. Nancy Olivieri said generic drug maker Apotex Inc. threatened to sue if she published a study critical of one of the company's drugs. Other researchers came to Olivieri's defense, but the hospital administration did not – prompting charges that it was trying to protect its relationship with Apotex.

The Apotex Foundation is one of the 10 largest philanthropic research foundations in Canada.

"We need to find out about the relationship between Apotex and this hospital... (and) why Dr. Olivieri and others have been consciously and persistently harassed inside the hospital -- simply for telling the truth," three of the hospital's doctors said in a statement.

Henry Dinsdale, president of the National Council on Ethics in Human Research, said there is no easy way to end the constant conflict between industry and scientific motivations.

"The resources of industry are essential to really be able to develop a product so it can be brought to market. So it's simply an area of tension that needs constant vigilance."

But some researchers fear vigilance may scare industry money away. International standards are being loosened, not tightened, as countries compete for funding in what Brill-Edwards calls a "race for the ethical bottom."

"Researchers do make this argument, that if we have safety standards that are too rigorous -- I call them integrity standards -- we just won't get money for research," she said.

"And that's perhaps where the ethics of this whole thing are laid bare.Are they really telling us that they will do anything to get research money?"

($1=$1.53 Canadian)

18:00 11-06-98

Antonio Lambert

Vice Président

Info Implants Mammaires

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