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by Sam
Gracis
Is The CHFA
Getting The Straight Goods From The NHPD?
As the NHPD rushes to
complete it s national traveling consultations and review of the feedback
from industry stakeholders, perhaps it would be wise to pause and review
the Agency’s charter and mission.
The offspring of the
Office of Natural Health Products, which was a creation House of Commons
Standing Committee on Health’ famous (or infamous) 53 recommendations,
the NHPD seems adrift in a sea of the minutia of pharmaceutical guidelines
and undue concerns about the safety of products, most which have been in
common usage for thousands of years.
Concerns over
manufacturing practices, raw material quality, labeling, and the nature of
the evidence required to make therapeutic claims, seem to have thrown out
the baby with the bathwater.
It is significant to
note that among the Standing Committee on Health’s recommendations there
was a commitment to ensure the continued availability of the Natural
Health Products (NHPs) which Canadians were (and are) turning to in
increasing numbers, and to ensure that no undue regulatory burdens were
placed on the manufacturers of NHPs. There was recognition that NHPs were
not drugs, and in fact had wide margins of safety. The Journal of the
American Medical Association recently published statistics that an
estimated 108,000 Americans die annually because of properly administered
prescription medicines (that’s not counting mistakes or abuse). In fact
it makes the top four for leading causes of death, right up there with
cancer and heart disease. It is probably fair to extrapolate that 10,000
Canadians die similarlySynthetic compounds with
that kind of potential for harm need a far stronger regulatory regime than
NHPs, which under the same parameters are estimated to have killed fewer
than two people. Hmmm?
Is someone swatting
fleas with a sledgehammer? Wouldn’t the time, effort, and scarce
healthcare resources bring expended by the NHPD be better invested in
policing and regulating the pharmaceutical industry’s well-intentioned,
but nonetheless lethal ministrations to the Canadian public? In this era
of health cutbacks wouldn’t it make sense to examine alternative
theories of wellness, which served man well for thousands of years and
nurture them, rather than regulate them to death?
The Taliban of medical
orthodoxy have ruled for too long and claimed too many victims in the name
science and profit. Rather than copying the European Unions NHP model,
crafted by the pharmacartels, or the international HARMonization
protocols, who share the same father, Health Canada should recognize the
unique value of NHPs and reconsider the path they are on. If they won’t
or don’t the natural health products industry as we know it today is
done like dinner.
That’s why one has to
wonder if the CHFA is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. As the premier
advocates for a strong and safe natural health industry the CHFA has
worked closely with the NHPD to get us where we are today.
For decades
they have worked hard to champion the cause of the health food industry
and now, in the hour of what could be their greatest triumph, they are
faced with banning of kava kava when their own experts assured them there
was no way that would ever happen.
They have re-examined their
organizational hierarchy and discovered that in spite of what the NHPD has
told them they are not an independent third category, but a stepchild of
the Therapeutic Products Directorate. Poor relations to the pharmacy
industry. A non-cost recovered bureaucracy in a time of sharp knives. For
certain there are many excellent people in the NHPD and in the CHFA. It s
time for them to stand up and be counted - before it is too late.
Peter Helgason, Kamloops,
B.C.
Free Your Vote in BC
Congratulations to
Adriane Carr and all the volunteers who worked so hard to publicize and
gather signatures for their proportional representation Free Your Vote
campaign. But this wasn’t a referendum. In fact the ten percent
requirement in every riding if accomplished, would have won no more than a
promise by our Liberal Government to ‘look at’ the pro-rep proposal
– no real commitment.
What we need now is to
begin holding public forums throughout the province to publicize, discuss
and debate the many different alternative forms of electoral democracy
both at the provincial and federal level of government. And then we should
hold a real referendum to decide which system we should use if we are
going to switch to a new form of electoral democracy.
Our Premier, Mr.
Campbell, has promised a Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform to look
at possible changes to B.C.’s voting system, ostensibly next spring of
2003. However, what we need now is to begin holding our own public forums
to make certain that all possible alternatives are publicized and debated.
Citizen assemblies
should be organized by we, the citizens and not by government – if we
want to retain control of the process and to make certain everything is
fair and open for review by all. A party which has just won a landslide
election has absolutely no need to change the system which has just been
so good to it. And what could be better than to have only two opposition
MLAs.
Scott Adams, Vancouver,
B.C
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