Branch of the Canadian Government that runs the
Laboratory Centers for Disease Control, that does for
Canada what the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does for the United States.
It runs the Health Protection Branch, or did, until massive budget cuts, in the interests of "reducing the costs" for taxpayers and letting the private sector do what the private sector does best. This branch of the Canadian Government dos for Canada what the Food and Drug Administration does for the United States--ensuring that new, and old, drugs are safe and effective.
Of late, the political fashion has been to let the pharmaceutical industry do its own testing, and submit its own figures to vouch for the safety and efficacy of the drugs it wants to profit from. Surely, this is the uninterested party we want to determine what you, me, and our loved ones consume!
Any quick search of Health Canada's website will show that it does so many things, for the heatlh of Canadians, that must be done, and cannot by the private sector, by individuals or by small municipalities.
Health Canada is not the agency that I would like it to be, but there are still vestiges of what it has been, and what it can yet be--the very essence of what the public sector should be.
Health Canada's Website: www.hc-sc.gc.ca
The "pharmaceutical industry" and it is an industry "has a vested interest" in profit regardless of what it has said, regardless of what gestures it may have made, in response to unsupportable public pressure.
This industry is one of the most profitable in the world, and has an unpleasant history of testing it products, not on laboratory animals, but on the public.
Can anyone remember thalidomide?