Joel Lexchin:

Big Pharma and the Canadian Medical Profession: Too Close for Comfort

Ever since the end of the World War II, the Canadian medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry have been in a tight embrace. This talk will explain why this relationship developed and then look at the consequences in terms of gifts doctors receive from companies, why doctors are willing to use promotion as a source of information, the influence of key opinion leaders and conflicts of interest policies in Canadian medical schools and medical societies. Finally, I will explore how to loosen the bonds between doctors and industry.

Joel Lexchin received his MD from the University of Toronto in 1977 and for the past 30 years has been an emergency physician at the University Health Network. He taught healthy policy in the School of Health Policy and Management at York University from 2001 to 2016 and is now a Professor Emeritus at York. He has been a consultant on pharmaceutical issues for the province of Ontario, various arms of the Canadian federal government, the World Health Organization, the government of New Zealand and the Australian National Prescribing Service. He is a frequent outspoken critic of the pharmaceutical industry and the way that Health Canada regulates drugs. His book Private profits versus public policy: the pharmaceutical industry and the Canadian state was published by University of Toronto Press in September 2016 and his new book Doctors in denial: why big pharma and the Canadian medical profession are too close for comfort was published by Lorimer in May 2017.