Ethics Newsline®

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

TORONTO
According to a report in the Globe & Mail, the president of the University of Toronto, Robert Prichard, has apologized to the University’s executive committee for sending a lobbying letter to several Canadian federal ministers and the prime minister at the request of drug manufacturer Apotex Inc.

The letter urged the federal government to give a 30-day extension to a review of drug-patent protection regulations that would have benefited Apotex Inc.

In his apology to the University’s executive committee, Mr. Prichard admitted that he wrote the letter because the proposed new legislation might make it financially impossible for Apotex to fulfill its $20 million donation to the University’s new Center for Cellular and Bimolecular Research.

The Globe & Mail report discloses that other universities and hospitals were also approached by Apotex Inc. to do the same lobbying and that several had complied. A University of Toronto medical researcher, Dr. Nancy Olivieri, whose negative research results on an Apotex drug resulted in a battle against the University and the company, commented that “it seems to me that many people here believe that science is for sale.”