SPEAKING OF HARM REDUCTION

We are responding to Margaret Wente's attack on the evaluation of
Vancouver's supervised injection facility. Contrary to her suggestion
that amateur Boy Scouts conducted the research, more than 30 people
have co-authored this body of work, including university-based
researchers from the U.S., U.K. and Australia. Furthermore, the
methodology of the evaluation was externally peer reviewed and published.

When studies were completed, we sought publication in the top medical
journals, and only after a study passed the test of anonymous expert
review and was published did we discuss the work publicly. To date,
more than 25 studies have been published in journals such as The New
England Journal of Medicine.

Ms. Wente wrongly implied that our team has been unwilling to share
data derived from Insite's evaluation. Consistent with academic
convention, most raw data are available in tabular format in the
published articles. We also recently shared raw data with the federal
government's Expert Advisory Committee on Supervised Injection Site
Research, and researchers from the University of Toronto were given
unfettered access to data to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of Insite.

Thomas Kerr and Julio Montaner and Evan Wood

B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

Vancouver