Timely. Health Canada used to second guess the FDA, but now they are rubber stamping FDA approvals of insanely expensive drugs that don’t work.
I’m a biomedical researcher who works with biotechs, drug companies and I have yet to understand what the 10,000 people who work at Health Canada actually do. We even started allowing drug marketing to consumers which is illegal in Canada.Quebec has had enough and started refusing to pay for $400,000/yr drugs that do nothing.
Similarly, HC approved Leqembi, which is not only ineffective, but can lead to brain hemorrhage. . But the CDN formulary is refusing to pay, so why did HC approve it?
Canada is spending over $45B/yr on drugs, many of the most expensive do actually nothing. But the governments (all of them last 25 years) refuse to invest in CDN-based drug discovery and would rather pay US corporations.
Canada Healthcare spending: $372B a year, $45B of that on drugs.
CIHR total budget, for all diseases, including cancer, $1.4B. 0.26% . THAT IS THE DEFINITION OF STUPID.
Carney is spending like a drunk sailor on war machines, but next to nothing on biomedical research. Trudeau was even worse, in the middle of a pandemic, he cut budgets by not even keeping with inflation.
SMA is a rare disease (1 in 10,000) , but the treatment for one patient is $2.4M, and Canada won’t fund a single researcher on this disease.
Some places are OK to take guidance from… just not the USA.
Guidance. Not rubber stamp. E.g. "The UK thinks this is OK. Let’s look at the evidence and decide if we agree. "Some places are OK to take guidance from… just not the USA.
Very quietly, the FDA fired one of their directors last November for trying to solicit bribes. Not a Trump thing, this was going on before Trump.
Let’s not even look at the FDA data.
Why would it?
Because it was cheaper to rubber stamp based on US rubber stamping.
I’m surprised that they’d be less rigourous, especially after thalidomide. Maybe not too surprised I guess…money talks.
I’m surprised that they’d be less rigourous, especially after thalidomide
They are careful to not approve dangerous drugs, but they are approving drugs that don’t work.
Cheaper on paper, they were an utter pain in the ass sometimes.



