RESEARCHERS SLAM OTTAWA'S 'POLITICIZATION OF SCIENCE'

VANCOUVER - Canadian scientists, doctors and public health researchers
have started openly protesting against what they call the federal
Conservative government's U.S.-style "politicization of science" in
the controversy over supervised-injection centres for drug addicts.

Prominent addictions researchers from B.C., Ontario and Quebec have
written an open letter to Health Canada criticizing the department's
recent proposal call for new research on the centre in spite of four
years of existing research at the site showing positive outcomes.

They say the terms for the new research ensure that it will be
superficial, inadequately funded and subject to an unreasonable demand
that researchers not be allowed to talk about it for six months after
reports are submitted.

"Clearly what that does is to muffle people who might have something
to say until after the curtain has dropped on this piece of political
theatre," Benedikt Fischer, a director of the B.C. Centre for
Addictions Research at the University of Victoria, said in an
interview Friday. "Overall, we get the feeling that what this is about
is there's an attempt to instrumentalize science in a fairly cheap way
for politics."

Besides that letter, a Toronto medical researcher has written a
commentary piece signed by 130 academics and researchers, condemning
the federal government for a move towards U.S.-style manipulation of
scientific research because of the doubts it has been attempting to
cast over existing research.

"We wish to state our deep concern regarding the subversion of science
for ideological ends, and express our commitment to speak out against
this threat," says the piece by Dr. Michael Hwang of the Centre for
Research on Inner-City Health at St. Michael's Hospital. "This case is
an alarming example of a recent trend towards the increased
politicization of science."

Both groups object to the federal government's move to stop funding
the research that had been done by researchers at the Centre for
Excellence for HIV/AIDS since the centre opened in 2003 and the
decision to commission new research.

Health Minister Tony Clement made a decision last August that the
government would only give an 18-month extension to the site, which
needs an exemption from federal drug laws in order to operate legally.
He also said that new questions needed to be answered through new research.

"Do safe injection sites contribute to lowering drug use and fighting
addiction? Right now the only thing the research to date has proven
conclusively is drug addicts need more help to get off drugs," Clement
said at the time.

Last month, Health Canada put out a request for proposals in six
different areas of research on the site. Among the specifics asked for
are the site's impact on overdose rates, users' progression to
treatment, public injection and drug-related litter, among others.

There are also contracts for researching the staffing requirements and
for comparing Vancouver's drug scene with other cities.

The deadline is next week and, once researchers are chosen, all the
research has to be submitted by October. The total amount of money
available for the six contracts is $260,000.

But Fischer said that there have already been 40 papers done by the
Centre for Excellence researchers, which have been published in
peer-reviewed journals.

"If you're looking for positive evidence, that's out there in ample
amounts, more than you would ever need."