Healthy Skepticism Library item: 490

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Publication type: news

Weinberg P.
Fired scientists spoke out on drug approvals
Rabble News 2004 May 13

Full text:

The three scientists in the department’s veterinary drugs directorate were on stress leave at the time of the firings.

The recent decision to fire three Health Canada veterinary scientists working in the government office that tests new drugs used on animals raised for food was made at the highest levels of the Canadian bureaucracy with the co-operation of the food and pharmaceutical industries.

That blunt statement comes from Michael McBane, co-ordinator of the Ottawa-based Canadian Health Coalition, which represents groups of seniors, farmers, women, labour unions and healthcare professionals.

“The animal drug industry basically worked really hard with senior management in Health Canada and with the Privy Council office (which advises senior government leaders and helps set departments’ policies), to have the scientists removed,” McBane said in an interview.

Adding to the controversy was the timing of the firings of Shiv Chopra, Margaret Haydon and Gerard Lambert – July 14, just two weeks after the federal election and before a new group of ministers overseeing all departments, including Health Canada, were sworn in.

At the time the three scientists in the department’s veterinary drugs directorate were on stress leave after alleging harassment by departmental officials.

Health Canada spokesperson Ryan Baker declined to comment on the suggestion that officials and corporate powers colluded to orchestrate the firings, and called the dismissals “a personal matter.”

But Chopra said his letter of termination cited “disobedience” as the reason for the action.

“Given your previous disciplinary record and your continued unwillingness to accept responsibility for work assigned to you, I have determined that the bond of trust that is essential to productive employer employee relationship has been irreparably breached,” Deputy Health Minister Ian Green wrote in the letter, reported by Canadian Press.

Steve Hindle, the president of the labour union that represents the scientists, says Health Canada “just reached the end of its rope” after years of reprimanding and suspending the scientists for their public opposition to the approval of specific veterinary drugs.

For example, resistance from Chopra, Haydon and Lambert towards a bovine growth hormone developed by agri-business giant Monsanto ultimately led to a Senate inquiry in the 1990s and a decision to not approve the drug in Canada.

Also, before the May 2003 discovery of mad cow disease in a cattle herd in western Alberta, which led the United States and Japan to ban Canadian beef, Chopra and Haydon had warned that too little was being done by the food industry and its regulators in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to prevent remains of dead cattle being used as feed for other cows.

The Indian-born Chopra, who has successfully launched anti-discrimination cases against Health Canada for failing to promote employees of non-European origin, has no explanation for the timing of the firings, but says the loss in income is creating “new stress” for the researchers and their families. Because they were dismissed from their jobs, they are not eligible for severance payments, he notes.

Hindle’s Professional Institute of the Public Service says it will appeal the firings before the Public Service Staff Relations Board, an independent tribunal that adjudicates disputes between the federal government and its employees, if Health Canada fails to reinstate them.

Although Chopra applauds the union’s support, he says the grievance appeal process will only deal with the technical and legal aspects of the department’s action.

Left out, he adds, will be the substance of the issue: the ability of the powerful food and pharmaceutical lobbies to pressure Ottawa to bypass scientific concerns about the introduction of suspected cancer-causing hormones and the excessive use of antibiotics in animals; the latter has been singled out for the declining effectiveness of antibiotics on human beings.

“The pharmaceutical companies openly for years kept on going to the Privy Council (and saying) that there are problems within veterinary drugs at Health Canada; they have backlogs of drugs that are not being passed. When we ask (the drug companies) for data, they don’t produce any,” Chopra adds.

But Jean Szkotnicki, president of the Canadian Animal Health Institute, the veterinary drugs industry association, denies her organization played a role in the firings. In fact, her industry benefits from a “robust” review of animal drugs, she said.

At the same time, added Szkotnicki, Canada is losing potential research and development investment dollars from food and pharmaceutical companies because of the slow pace of testing of veterinary drugs at Health Canada. The same drugs have been endorsed by officials in other countries after going through “a similar type risk assessment and risk management program,” she added.

“We are often one of the last countries in the world to approve a product,” according to Szkotnicki.

Chopra counters that the animal drug industry has not produced any new products for many years, beyond “spreading and maintaining” the same types of hormones and antibiotics “of questionable safety” in the Canadian meat industry.

McBane adds that the European Union (EU) continues to ban imports of Canadian beef because of its hormone content.

The issue is the right of government scientists to do their job, he adds.

“At the end of the day, these scientists were performing their statutory duty under the law, in this case the Food and Drugs Act. And their senior managers, the deputy minister, the associate deputy minister and the director general were basically telling them to operate outside of the rule of law, to ignore the laws of Canada, and to expose Canadians to known health risks.”

Chopra says he expects the Senate to investigate the firings.

In 1998 the standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry promised Health Canada scientists that in exchange for testimony on the safety of Canada’s food, their jobs would not be jeopardized. “They told us, ‘anytime, if anything happens to you, come to us’,” recalls Chopra.