The safety of pharmaceutical use in B.C. could be at risk if the province’s independent drug advisory body is squeezed out of a revamped review process, according to critics.

Michael McBane, the national coordinator of the Canadian Health Coalition, called the government’s new drug review process a “marketing process” rather than an independent assessment.

“The new review process will actually threaten people’s lives with dangerous new drugs brought onto the market with greater speed, and no independent checks on whether there’s harms caused by the drugs,” he told the Straight by phone today (November 24).

McBane is concerned that the 14-year-old Therapeutics Initiative, a drug advisory body based at the University of British Columbia, could face closure under the new review process.

One of the recommendations of a 2008 pharmaceutical task force was to establish a new drug review resource committee.

“It’s a sad day that B.C. had the best drug review process in Canada and it was a model for other provinces, and in fact we were in the process of advocating the adoption of the methodology used by Therapeutics Initiative in Vancouver—we were advocating that to be the gold standard for other provinces,” McBane said.

He’s also concerned about new drug review measures outlined in a memo from deputy health minister John Dyble, including reduced timelines for approval and “increased sponsor engagement.”

According to the Sept. 30 memo, “there are now four separate sponsor engagement points within the enhanced review process, including an opportunity to comment both pre-and-post Drug Benefit Council recommendation and pre-and-post Ministry decision.”

Drug policy researcher Alan Cassels said the new process could impact the safety of pharmaceutical use in the province.

“Allowing conflicted people to be part of the process is something we don’t tolerate in other aspects of our society,” Cassels told the Straight by phone.

“We don’t invite Seagrams and Labatt’s onto the board to help us decide on liquor policy in British Columbia. We don’t allow the jury in a trial to have members that are related to the defendant. So why would we allow people with conflicts of interest to be part of decision-making on something that affects four million British Columbians in a very serious way, because they swallow this stuff?”

Ministry of Health spokesperson Brian Cotton said the engagement process is “allowing the drug companies to make comments and respond to questions as the process moves along, instead of hitting reset every time a snag comes up.”

“At the end of the day, any recommendations to the ministry that the reviewers are making is going to be independent,” he told the Straight by phone.

Follow Yolande Cole on Twitter at twitter.com/yolandecole.