Last October, the Harper government appointed Bernard Prigent to the governing council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the federal agency that distributes about a billion dollars annually for health research. That appointment was met with near-universal condemnation from medical ethicists, because Prigent is a vice-president of Pfizer Canada, a firm that stands to profit from the decisions made at CIHR.
“There’s a structural conflict of interest,” explains Jocelyn Downie, the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at Dalhousie University. “On the one hand, it’s [Prigent’s] statutory duty to represent the best health interests of Canadians, and on the other hand, as an executive with Pfizer, he’s legally bound to promote the profit interests of his company. Those competing interests will not always align, and will sometimes be in conflict.”
Prigent’s appointment was all the more remarkable because just a month before, Pfizer was fined $2.3 billion in the United States, the largest criminal fine ever assessed in that country, for fraudulently marketing the arthritis drug Bextra for unapproved uses.
Prigent’s appointment resulted in an extraordinary review by the parliamentary standing committee on health, but it was not reversed.
But the parliamentary committee did not have a crucial piece of evidence: not only is Prigent a vice president of Pfizer, but he is also a registered lobbyist for Pfizer. That information is only now coming to light, and has never been previously reported. According to the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada, the government agency that regulates lobbyists, Prigent’s position as Pfizer lobbyist is to sway policy at the “Canadian Institute of Health Researchers (CIHR) and other Research Oriented Spending Programs as it relates to private/public research and development partnerships,” and Prigent is to achieve these aims through both oral and written techniques.
In other words, Prigent the Pfizer lobbyist is paid to lobby Prigent the CIHR official.
Federal rules require that lobbyists file monthly reports about “oral and arranged communications relating to a contract regardless of who initiated the communication,” but Prigent has not filed such a report.
Prigent did not respond to a request for comment.
This article appears in Feb 4-10, 2010.
One of my favourite military autobiographies has a short characterization of a fellow the author knew, a military officer who, as sometimes happens, temporarily had occasion to fill two billets. Unfortunately for said officer the two billets were in a somewhat adversarial chain-of-command relationship. So the guy spent half of each day wearing one hat, issuing orders to various other commands, one of which latter included him wearing the *other* hat, which he did in the afternoon. In the afternoon he’d strive mightily to meet the demands he’d set for himself in the morning, frequently fail to do so, and write copious memoranda explaining why he couldn’t meet the deadlines, and asking for more time and resources. Next morning he’d read the memoranda and reject most of the pleas.
Eventually this guy broke under the self-imposed strain and was quietly removed. Maybe this’ll happen to Prigent…
Perhaps he should just de-register as a lobbyist or delete from his registration all references to CHIR.
If he has not filed monthly reports you may assume he did not conduct any communications ‘relating to a contract…’ or you may assume he is just late in filing.
I just wish Ms Downie and her ilk would just say they don’t want any person with a business background on any board of a government agency.
Are you trying to say that what’s good for Pfizer isn’t good for Canada?
Isn’t this how pork barrelling works? It would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact the conservatives weaseled their way into “power” by accusing others of doing the very same thing.
The big pharmas have far too much to say in the delivery of healthcare in this country as it is. To put one of their corporate executives in such an obvious conflict of interest position is insulting. It is not the business sense that I object to, that executives of large corporations bring to the table, to conduct affairs in a businesslike fashion on time and within budget. It’s the shameful lack of ethics and the treatment of serious diseases solely as markets to be exploited that I can’t accept in a public official. Unlike these Tory hacks and as a Liberal small business person I have respect for a dollar, I just don’t worship it.
I think that the Canadians who would care about this are too busy caring about this same sort problem happening in the American government. While we fume and vent spleen at the American stlye of promoting people with interest conflicts our own government is taking the opportunity to do the same thing while everyone’s head is turned.
A little late for comments, but Stephen Lewis…the first to bring this forward (as far as I know) appears to have a keen eye on these complicated issues. THANK GOD! Who ever could have predicted six months ago that a progressive change in MS treatment could be blindsided bycorporate greed….sorry, of course we all could predict it but to have the exact details of how???? I suspect this will be a scandal we will be hearing about this for years to come. We are going to need a lot more lawyers!!! Not sure how that will work out!!!
Can you update us on what happened to the petition against Prigent’s appointment and the subsequent government response? Does life go happily on as it should at the CIHR?
The appointment seems to have been well-timed. It’s as if they had prior knowledge of a certain upcoming TV broadcast about Dr. Paulo Zamboni, by CTV, the following month. A billion dollars is a pretty good budget, but I guess it can buy a lot of hocus-pocus.