FEDERAL STAND ON INSITE ONE OF DUPLICITY AND INTRANSIGENCE

Although medical waiting times get a lot more attention, the public
should be aware of another health care scandal, and it involves
government attempts to suppress medical research.

The research, published in top-flight academic journals, has found
that a new medical intervention effectively reduces some of the harms
associated with a chronic disease, while not creating any new harms.

Instead of acknowledging this evidence and seeking to ensure that the
intervention is available to all of those afflicted by the disease,
the federal government has been doing the opposite. Specifically, it
has attempted to create the impression that the new intervention is
not effective, and has decreed that it will not make the intervention
available to vulnerable people who need it.

If this story involved any ordinary intervention, the scandal would be
the lead story in newspapers and newscasts across Canada. And the
government would not last long if it insisted on continuing its record
of duplicity and intransigence.

Alas, this is no ordinary intervention. Rather, the story concerns
Insite, Vancouver's supervised injection facility.

For the past few years, researchers at the B.C. Centre for Excellence
in HIV/AIDS, who act as independent evaluators of Insite, have been
monitoring the site and publishing their findings in peer-reviewed
journals.

Some two dozen studies have been published and have found, among other
things, that the site is associated with a reduction in public
injecting and HIV risk behaviour, and even with increased uptake of
addiction treatment. The success of the site has led officials in
other cities to express interest in starting their own supervised
injection facilities.

Yet, as the researchers detail in a new paper published today in the
International Journal of Drug Policy, the federal government has been
doing everything possible to suppress the research and create the
impression that Insite has not been effective.

The government's efforts to interfere with the research became
abundantly clear after Health Minister Tony Clement refused, in 2006,
to extend the life of the site for another 31/2 years, instead
allowing only a six-month extension. The feds also refused to allow
supervised injection facility research in other cities.

In an effort to explain this decision, Clement issued a press release
stating that the research raised "new questions," and implied that
further research was necessary. Yet how are researchers supposed to
answer these new questions -- and the government never detailed what
the new questions were -- when it refuses to allow research to be conducted?

It appears the government wished to suppress further research out of
fear that the research would indicate that Insite is a beneficial
intervention. After all, the research to date has attested to Insite's
beneficial effects, and the feds have done their best to spin this
research in their favour.

Notably, Clement has stated that there is an academic debate about the
success of Insite. Nothing could be further from the truth: The
research has resulted in an impressive academic consensus that the
site is a worthwhile medical intervention.

Evidence of this consensus becomes clear as more and more scientific
and medical researchers go on record opposing the government's
attempts to spin the research.

Last year, for example, St. Michael's Hospital researcher Stephen
Hwang wrote a commentary in the online journal Open Medicine, accusing
the feds of allowing ideology to trump science. The commentary was
signed by more than 130 physicians and scientists.

And in an interview on Thursday, Graydon Meneilly, head of the
department of medicine at the University of British Columbia, called
the government's actions "reprehensible."

They are. Certainly, the government has the authority to oppose
supervised injection sites, even though they benefit some of Canada's
most vulnerable people.

But if it is going to do so, it ought to be honest about its reasons,
instead of trying to hoodwink the public by spinning evidence and
disallowing future research whose results might conflict with its agenda.