Tory MP Takes on Big Pharma

On why Health Canada is not protecting health: "If you include over-the-counter and prescription drugs, now there are, I think, worldwide a total of 50,000 drugs on the market. And so there is no way that our regulators can keep up with all the new products coming on the market to determine if they're truly safe before they go on the market. And then there are political pressures put on the politicians and then the bureaucrats to get the drugs approved faster, which is dangerous, downright dangerous. I mean, imagine if someone stood up in the air traffic control centre leaning over the air traffic controller saying, 'Hurry up, get those planes in.' Well that's what happens with prescription drugs.

"To get a drug approved, you do not have to prove in the clinical testing that it works better than the existing bestseller drug on the market. You only have to prove that it works slightly, even one per cent better than placebo -- than nothing. So you've got one out of five new drugs approved on the market that is going to need a brand new serious safety warning or be pulled off the market altogether, yet all they have to do is prove it's one per cent better than nothing.

"Drug companies pay Health Canada officials to have their drugs reviewed. They pay millions of dollars in fees. Well, of course that creates an inappropriate relationship, and so their attitude is we're paying to get the drugs approved. And then they begin to apply political pressure to get them approved faster which is even more foolish. The last thing you want to do is rush drug approval."