|
continued
They need to know that their efforts to wisely and thoughtfully protect your health and your rights are noticed and appreciated.
Following the regulations under the WTO, Bill C-51 asks Members of Parliament to give to Health Canada sweeping police powers of searching premises without subpoenas and confiscating products and property – even to the point of seizing homes and businesses similar to Canada’s current seizures of properties where marijuana growops are found. These are very sober questions that your Member of Parliament is currently considering.
You can access any MP’s email address from the Government Canada’s official site, using your postal code or MP’s name:
http://canada.gc.ca/directories-repertoires/direct-eng.html
or very quickly from the following site:
http://www.yayacanada.com/MPs.html
It’s impossible for this to happen in Canada... isn’t it?
No, it isn’t. It’s already happened in many countries in Europe and most recently Australia under their past conservative government. Many supplements that were previously available no longer are, and no studies were done to show that they were a risk. A long tradition and experience of using many supplements collectively within these countries didn’t matter. And signs of this interference have already been seen in Canada and the U.S. Health Canada’s change of terms in C-51 from “drug” to “therapeutic product” is a clear sign that the intent is to direct attention of these measures to natural health products, so that the public is not confused by the old term of “drug”.
Why would the big pharmaceutical firms want to do this? Aren’t they already massively profitable?
Quoted from the Los Angeles Times, Jan 27, 2008:
The strategy that has made
the pharmaceutical industry
one of the wealthiest and
most powerful on Earth is
finally starting to betray it.
Beginning in just a few
weeks, and continuing over
the next several years, some
of the biggest-selling and
most profitable drugs in
history will lose their patent
protection. When the 20-
year patent on a drug expires,
its sales plummet because
other companies can
sell generic versions for a
fraction of the price.
Of course, it was no secret
that these patents would
expire. Everyone in the industry
knew that time would
run out on these monopolies.
The real problem is that
the industry's scientists have
hit a dry spell. They are not
discovering enough new
drugs to replace the aging
standbys. Last year, the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration
approved just 19 new
medicines, according to preliminary
data, the fewest
since 1983.
Moody's, the bond-rating
company, sounded the warning
on Wall Street last fall.
The firm said the financial
outlook for the wildly profitable
pharmaceutical industry
had turned sour. Some companies,
the firm said, faced
the loss of as much as half
their revenues. The Wall
Street Journal followed up
on the report last month
(December, 2007) with a front-page story headlined
"Big Pharma Faces Grim
Prognosis."
For the full article, click
here:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/ la-op-peterson27jan27,0,5254811.story |