Now that Ottawa finally has ended uncertainty over whether bovine somatotropin should be licensed for legal sale in Canada (no), there are some lingering questions that should be answered in the months ahead.
At stake is the credibility of Health Canada’s system for evaluating the safety and effectiveness of human and animal products ranging from veterinary drugs to breast implants and human pharmaceuticals.
Question 1: Has the nine-year BST saga – complete with accusations of undue corporate influence, intimidation of scientists and bureaucratic bias – eroded public confidence in the government’s ability to judge new health and vet products?
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It has. Months of internal squabbles and political questions have left the impression of a regulatory system in chaos.
Question 2: Can this be repaired?
Health Canada dearly hopes so. Its managers promote a review and reform of the Health Protection Branch to make the branch more efficient and “transparent”.
Critics are suggesting the review is simply a way to move the department’s priority from health protection toward better service for corporate “clients” with product applications to move through the system.
It is not a good beginning, suggesting the rough political ride for HPB credibility will continue.
Question 3: Did the BST fiasco feature an undue amount of politics in what is supposed to be a science-based product evaluation system? If so, is that always such a bad thing?
In the end, despite all the fine words about the need to separate scientific evaluation from political pressure, the BST decision came down to politics.
There was too much controversy, too much opposition, to let the Monsanto application linger.
Senior managers were looking for a way out of the mess. A veterinarians’ report recycling well-known risks to dairy cow health was their ticket.
They could cite scientific doubts to justify an action which cuts political losses and appeases public opinion.
Now, defenders of a “science-based” health and veterinary products approval system will fret that political considerations have tainted the process, creating a precedent for political decisions.
It will be the responsibility of the department to restore the public’s faith that scientific judgments about new products are made on the facts.
But there is another side to this.
Kempton Matte, chief lobbyist for the Canadian dairy processing industry, suggests that for a product like BST which is not “medicinal”, there is nothing wrong with allowing for a little politicking.
The implications of BST go far beyond questions of safety. It also could affect the supply management system, consumer reaction to products and other political or economic factors.
Defenders of the science-based approach could produce arguments about why politics should be kept out of it.
But then, scientific calculations can carry their own political bias too.
The place, if any, of political argument should rightly be part of the debate on how to revise the system of product approval.
