Fintan
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Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 6098
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 Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:55 am Post subject: Jail for Big Pharma Whistleblowers |
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| Quote: | The below news item from the PharmainFocus website has some interesting information relative to new laws the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) wish to implement. As part of the new Joint Trans Tasman Alliance or as it has been rebadged, the Australia and New Zealand Therapeutic Products Authority (ANZTPA), the TGA now wants to create an environment in which its employees and agents (whistle blowers) face gaol sentences if they reveal or leak anything to the press.
This legislation is no doubt trying to stop scientists like David Graham from revealing that the anti-arthritis drug called VIOXX was responsible for killing over 55,000 people in the USA and all the other side effects and deaths that the TGA and the FDA sweep under the carpet for their drug company masters.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-11-29-fda-graham_x.htm
Why? because the TGA and the FDA are funded almost 100% by pharmaceutical drug companies, its in their interest to keep the drug companies profits safe and not keep us, the public, safe.
http://www.ahf-au.org/vioxx.abc.4.corners.htm
The TGA would like to have the New Zealand people believe that they will not be affected by this but this is just to stop New Zealand public from becoming jittery about the impending loss and take over of their health industry by the Australian TGA. In time this regulatory standard will be implemented in both counties. Commonly referred to as regulatory creep!
| Quote: | Jail for leaking drug information
http://www.pharmainfocus.com.au
Posted 9 April 2007
In a significant boost to protection of commercial-in-confidence and other sensitive information, Australian employees of the forthcoming ANZTPA face jail if they make unauthorised disclosures.
According to a draft of the Australian bill to implement the ANZ Therapeutic Products Authority (TPA) released last week, unauthorised disclosure of information will be a crime for Australian employees of and other "people performing a service" for the authority, punishable by two years'' imprisonment.
New Zealand ANZTPA employees can breathe more easily as the bill covering the scheme in NZ contains no clause making unauthorised disclosure a crime or imposing jail time for any such disclosure. Neither does the Therapeutic Goods Act that currently regulates Australian pharma.
Medicines Australia supported the criminalisation of unauthorised disclosure in Australia as protective of commercial-in-confidence information.
"We think it is appropriate for a company’s commercial-in-confidence information to be appropriately protected when submitted to the authority for evaluation for obtaining a product licence," a spokesperson said.
"The reference to people performing a service for the Authority would encompass external evaluators employed by the authority, whom we agree should be covered by the same terms as an employee in so far as management of information they receive in the course of performing that service."
However, MA said it could not offer an explanation as to why the measure had been included in the Australian but not the NZ bill.
The whistle blowing sanction is one of a number of differences between the participants in the joint scheme revealed by the exposure draft of the Therapeutic Products Bill 2007.
Although they contain similar clauses, in many places the bills are different in structure and language.
The Australian bill will require changes to other Australian legislation to support its stance on parliamentary disallowance of rules and orders made by the Authority.
The scheme proposes that, although rules and orders can be disallowed, they can only be disallowed as a whole. At present, regulations under acts of the Australian Parliament can be disallowed in part as well as whole. ANZTPA will be an exception in this regard and require changes to Australian law as a result.
The two countries will operate different freedom of information regimes pertaining to the scheme. In Australia requests to release information will have to be made under the Freedom of Information Act whereas in NZ they will be made under the Official Information Act.
This creates the potential for different disclosure regimes in each jurisdiction. For example, the identity of drugs under consideration for licensing may be available through the NZ system but not through the Australian system.
"The Joint Agency Establishment Group has emphasised to us that it is essential that the Australian and NZ bills achieve the same regulatory outcomes in each country. We believe that this remains the objective, which we fully support, and will be considering whether any differences between the two bills might compromise this objective," the MA spokesperson said.
MA said it would definitely be providing detailed comment on the draft legislation by the May for deadline for comment.
The NZ parliamentary select committee currently holding hearings on the ''mirror image'' legislation presented to the NZ Parliament last December is due to report on June 15. |
Pharma in Focus is of course a drug company media outlet so the above article reads in favour of this new legislation.
Michael Bending
Alliance for Health Freedom Australia
http://www.ahf-au.org
'All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing'
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Irish born writer and politician - |
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