Bill C-51

Written - 18 May, 2008

The Canadian government has created an embarrassing revolving door policy through the Ministry of Health. Tony Clements, a former 25% shareholder in the Toronto pharmaceutical company Prudential Chem Inc., has shamelessly rewarded cronies with contracts and most recently introduced amendments to the Food and Drug Act that endanger the democracy of health choices for consumers through Bill C-51. While proposed to regulate fraudulent claims, the actual intent appears to be concentrating corporate control of all forms of medicine.

Bill C-51 proposes radical changes to the monitoring of holistic, herbal and Traditional medicines and would essentially remove up to 70% of these products from public consumption. In order for these products to be sold under the bill, they would have to undergo scientific validation. However, rarely are there isolated compounds within herbal medicines that can be evaluated, rather the medicines are holistic, which includes emotional support from the practitioner. Alternative medicines have been validated through millennia of human use and experimentation, though conventional science does not recognize this long-term knowledge as legitimate.

Importantly, many people have begun to rediscover alternative medicines as over reliance on pharmaceuticals has been characterized by unknown and disastrous side effects, such as the creation of superbugs. These characteristics reflect an economic approach to medicine where products are rapidly assessed in order to get them on the market quickly and profit motivates rather than healing. Regulating agencies are often overburdened with evaluating new products and thus some of the onus for clinical trials is left to the manufacturer rather than a neutral third party.

The Fraser Institute recently reported that 54% of Canadians use alternative forms of medicine and that 10% rely on herbal products, which translated into $2.2 billion in sales. Often these products are collected and processed by small businesses, which would not be able to incur the huge costs associated with scientifically validating these medicines. However, major pharmaceuticals could do so and a growing market with that much revenue would be an important investment. Perhaps it might not be much of a leap to suggest that Minister Clements sees the economics of it too?