Where There’s Smoke, There’s Pfizer: Sparks Fly Over Recent CIHR Appointment

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Where There’s Smoke, There’s Pfizer:  Sparks Fly Over Recent CIHR Appointment

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Governing Council (GC) has a new member:  Dr. Bernard Prigent, the Vice-President of Medical Affairs for Pfizer Canada. 

Steven Lewis, former (and founding) member of the Governing Council is outraged.

In an essay to be published on Tuesday by Longwoods Publishing (and pre-released here) he writes:

·         Seemingly countless systematic transgressions of pharma against scientific integrity and honest marketing have been documented in grisly detail. 

·         How does a Pfizer VP remain agnostic about whether an institute as the Institute for Health Services and Policy Research should be renewed if it supports research that shows a Pfizer drug is dangerous or identifies the massive public subsidies that flow to drug companies?

·         Dr. Prigent’s company recently paid a whopping $2.3 billion for fraudulently marketing Bextra, a painkiller withdrawn from the market in 2005, and 3 other drugs.  Dr. Prigent’s signature adorns the confessional letter that alerted Canadian practitioners to the company’s malfeasance. 

·         There are innumerable alternatives to get commercialization advice -- all of them cleaner and more transparent. 

·         As a member of GC, Dr. Prigent,  will from time to time have access to information that his competitors do not, and he can exert a steering effect where they cannot.

“Given these facts,” notes Mr. Lewis, “one is hard pressed to view the appointment as anything other than a deliberate provocation.”

According to Mr. Lewis, at least  3300 people have signed a petition protesting the appointment, many of them prominent researchers, ethicists, and public policy experts.  He warns that the government and the CIHR want this to go away; their biggest allies are silence and resignation. He calls for more people to sign the petition, write their MPs  and write op-eds for local newspapers. 

The complete essay is posted here:

http://www.longwoods.com/product.php?productid=21198

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For more information contact:

(Author) Steven Lewis at Steven.Lewis@shaw.ca

(Editorial Director) Dianne Foster Kent at dkent@longwoods.com or (business hours 416 864 9667)

Steven Lewis is a health policy and research consultant based in Saskatoon, and Adjunct Professor of Health Policy at the University of Calgary and Simon Fraser University (where he was Visiting Scholar in 2007). Previously he headed a health research granting agency and spent 7 years as CEO of the Health Services Utilization and Research Commission in Saskatchewan. He has served on various boards and committees, including the Governing Council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Saskatchewan Health Quality Council, the Health Council of Canada, and the editorial boards of several journals including Healthcare Papers and Open Medicine. His published work covers topics such as reforming and strengthening Medicare, improving health care quality, primary health care, regionalization, and the management of wait times.

Longwoods Publishing Corporation  (Longwoods) publishes academic and professional information and journals covering health and health care ideas, policies and practices and works in collaboration with governments, institutes, health care organizations, academe, and the the private sector including the Institute for Health Services and Policy Research and pharmaceutical companies.