TORIES PUT GAG ON INSITE STUDIES

No one should have any illusion about Ottawa's decision to grant the
supervised injection site a six-month extension.

Rather than breathing a sigh of relief at Tory Health Minister Tony
Clement's curt announcement Tuesday, people were outraged. Former
mayors, leading scientists and community activists have all come to
the same cynical conclusion: This is simply a delaying tactic to get
Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his minority government past the
next general election. Once it's over, the injection site will be shut
down.

Clement's message was delivered in advance of the Tory's much
anticipated drug strategy announcement because the injection site has
no place in the Tory's drug strategy.

Harper has said on more than one occasion that he has no interest in
supporting a program that involves the use of illegal drugs,
regardless of the mountain of scientific evidence appearing in
respected journals saying the outcomes from the injection site have
been beneficial.

Understand that this site deals with only a very small portion of the
drug problem. But nonetheless, there have been no overdose deaths at
the site. There is also evidence that, among those regularly using the
site, there is less sharing of needles so the spread of disease has
declined. As well, researchers found a significant number of people
contacted at the site moved on to rehabilitation. There are even
reports that street disorder has declined as a result of its presence.

But again, this is a small experiment in the midst of a huge problem.
It will hardly fix everything.

When Clement granted a 16-month extension a year ago to Dec. 1 of this
year, he said evidence of the success of the supervised injection site
was inconclusive. Then he refused to continue the funding for research
at the site as the previous Liberal government had done.

Finally he reversed himself and agreed to fund six "streams" of
research for six research projects. But the federal committee
overseeing the research was a dysfunctional mess. The chair, Liviana
Calzavera, resigned. There was no way research could be completed by
Dec. 1. Hence the extension to June 30, which conveniently plays to
the Tories' reelection plans.

The requests for those six research proposals went out late. As of
this week only two of the six have been approved for funding. Their
deadlines are next Feb. 15.

Meanwhile, qualified scientists have been refusing the work in droves.
And not just because of the short time frame. Ottawa is insisting on a
gag rule in all its contracts. People involved in the research are
prohibited from talking about their results publicly until six months
after their work is completed.

Do the math. That is well after the June 30 extension for the
injection site when the government might use that research as an
excuse for closing the site.

A group of five scientists from across the country led by Benedikt
Fischer, senior scientist with the Toronto Centre for Addiction and
Mental Health, fired a letter off to Ottawa last May refusing to
participate in any research under the conditions outlined. They cited
concerns over the gag order, time constraints, money allocated for the
projects, and the question of just who would use their research and
how. Unlike the research that has already been done on the site, none
of this will be peer reviewed.

The B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS at UBC had one project
approved but turned it down. Both UBC's lawyers and the university's
research ethics board considered the gag order "unethical."

Further, an article in Open Medicine by University of Toronto
researcher Stephen Hwang, signed by 130 Canadian doctors, scientists
and public health public health professionals, denounced Clement
saying: "Scientific evidence is about to be trumped by ideology."

And do the Tories care? Apparently not.