In Depth
Off limits: Seniors and anti-psychotic drugs
Transcript: Terence Young
January 7, 2008
CBC News
Following the death of his daughter, Drug Safety Canada president Terence Young began pushing for strict reforms to Canada's drug surveillance system. Young, who was an MPP for Halton Centre from 1995 to 1999, discusses Health Canada's mandate and how to make the drug surveillance system safer. Here is an excerpt of an interview with the CBC's David McKie.
David McKie: How did you become an advocate for greater drug safety?
Terence Young: In March of 2000, I came home on a Saturday at 6:30, after doing some shopping, and our 15-year-old daughter Vanessa came down to negotiate her evening's activities and fell down dead in front of me. She died the next day in Hamilton McMaster University Hospital and I began investigating what could cause such a thing and it turned out to be a Johnson and Johnson [medication] called Prepulsid. And from then on my life took a different turn. I spent the better part of four years investigating not just Prepulsid but the pharmaceutical industry as a whole. I discovered that there's a lot of room for improvement, to put it mildly.
David McKie: Take us back to the coroner's inquest into Vanessa's death. What did it have to say about the warnings that Health Canada puts out?
Terence Young: The inquest took place in a really strange coincidence exactly a year to the day after Vanessa died — March 19, 2001 was the first day. There were numerous experts, over 16 days of testimony. The jury made 59 recommendations to Health Canada, the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons, to the pharmaceutical industry as a whole and the pharmacists on how to make our drug surveillance system safer. Dr. Brian Gillespie from Health Canada was asked on the stand if the media picked up [the agency's] fifth warning on Prepulsid in February, the month before Vanessa died. He said, 'No, that really wasn't in their mandate.' We refer to that now as a message in a bottle. If you issue a press release but don't do any follow up to see if anybody carried it, you really haven't sent the message at all.
David McKie: Was there any recommendation that Health Canada would make sure that the message gets to where it's supposed to be going?
Terence Young: There were a number of recommendations — one was that Health Canada put together a joint body with the pharmaceutical industry, the provinces, doctors and pharmacists and consumer groups to examine the efficacy of drug labels and warnings. As far as I know that never happened, so important information is still not reaching the doctors and the public.
David McKie: How do you feel about that?
Terence Young: It's really the same-old, same-old. We've been monitoring this system of inadequate warnings for seven years and nothing significant has changed in seven years. It's actually a little hard to believe. The safety warnings sent out to doctors simply don't work and this was well established at the inquest into Vanessa's death.
There is nothing to prevent Health Canada from publishing public warnings about prescription drugs, they just don't do it. Seven years later and they're still talking about 1-800 numbers and links to their web site and how many people know the web site is there. But how many people actually go to their web site? And how many look at the adverse reactions that are reported there? And are they able to interpret that data?
Health Canada claims their responsibility stops when the information gets into doctors' hands. I find that disingenuous on several levels. The Food and Drug Act says that the Health Canada mandate is to promote the safety of drugs and maximize the safety and efficacy of drugs. And they know the safety information is not getting into the doctors' hands. These are all lessons into the death of Vanessa Young seven years ago and they haven't made significant progress since.
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