Developing countries lose out on Canadian generic drugs.
big pharma
Access-to-medicine bill is mired in Parliamentary red tape
A parliament battle currently raging gives the impression that the Conservative government isn't keen on delivering affordable drugs to children dying from HIV in the rest of the world.
Of course, many members of the public disagree, especially the 30,261 signatories of a petition calling for the government to support Bill C-393.
Big Pharma and the real story behind drug costs
Canadians pay 16 to 40 per cent more for drugs than the average of industrialized countries. A national Pharmacare program, as a half-dozen countries already have, would save Canada over $10 billion a year on its $25-billion drug bill. Even other reforms short of a full national program would save billions in administration costs, drug costs (through bulk buying) and eliminated tax subsidies.
This claim is the argument of a report released by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Since rising drug prices are one of the main drivers of a health-care system said to be headed for unsustainability, shouldn't we be curious about checking this out?
A treatment for multiple sclerosis that upsets Big Pharma
In a breakthrough in the treatment of multiple sclerosis, last summer Dr. Paolo Zamboni, a vascular surgeon from the University of Ferrara in Italy, made public the results of findings from his study of 65 MS patients.
Dr. Zamboni and colleagues investigated CCSVI -- Chronic Cerebrospinal Venous Insufficiency -- a condition characterized by blockages in the veins causing problems in the blood flow drainage from the brain and/or spinal cord of sufferers. This condition has been shown to contribute in a significant way to the many symptoms of multiple sclerosis. It can be relieved by angioplasty, which is a simple surgical treatment that removes the blockages.
Health Canada fails to act as drug shortages impact trans men
An ongoing drug shortage is causing a hassle for trans men and other users of injectable testosterone.
Mary Potter is a registered nurse with the Sherbourne Health Centre's LGBT Primary Care Program. She says the most important thing for users to know is that they have other options for medication.
"The issue is when they don't come to see us or... they're told by the pharmacy that they just don't have it and people are waiting without the medication," she says.
Waiting, rather than finding an alternative drug, can result in a lapse of the medication's effects. "They should be coming in to see their physicians or nurse practitioners because they can be switched to a different compound."
Not Rex: Dope wars
The Global Commission on Drug Policy has just weighed in. The War on Drugs is an abysmal failure. They even get it in the U.S. So why is Canada going on a bad trip? The Harper government is trying to shut down Vancouver's In Site and legislating mandatory prison-filling minimum drug sentences.
Halting rising drug costs in Canada
Workers at the Moosehead Brewery in Saint John have been locked out for three weeks in a different kind of labour dispute: over high drug costs. The company says it can no longer afford to pay 100 per cent of these costs to its retirees, and wants employees to kick in 30 per cent -- a reminder of the pressures of drug costs on private as well as public plans.
Meanwhile, one of Quebec's foremost public health specialists, Dr. Fernand Turcotte, co-founder of the Laval medical school, recently announced a shattering realization: "that the things I had been teaching my students for 35 years were not true."
October 25, 2010 |
The National Union of Public and General Employees is concerned that big name pharmaceutical companies are attempting to sway trade negotiations to expand their patent rights.
