THE TIDE OF HISTORY

Health Minister Tony Clement's hostility to harm reduction and
safe-injection sites such as Vancouver's Insite is a "tide of history"
issue (Clement's Insite Attack Leaves WHO Red-Faced - front page, Aug.
6).

Historians of public health will come to view the minister's
remarks as curious, retrograde and out of touch with the science on
HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C - potentially worthy of inclusion in
history-of-science textbooks in the company of Galileo versus the
Catholic Church. In the interim, people will continue to suffer
needlessly in the cause of ideological fidelity.

Craig Jones

executive director, John Howard Society of Canada

Kingston