Pharma giants push Trump insiders to target Canadian drug pricing

Firms including Pfizer and Merck urged U.S. trade officials to challenge Canada's drug pricing policy, which they say “devalues U.S. medicines.”

Why it's important: Trump’s trade war could be leveraged to force the Canadian government into aligning its drug pricing formula more closely with America’s, sending drug costs to patients (and insurers) sky-high.

A consortium of companies is arguing that Canada’s drug pricing violates the spirit of CUSMA, setting the stage for some particularly ugly negotiations. Canada’s Patented Medicine Prices Review Board sets price caps by comparing drug prices across a group of 11 countries. The U.S. used to be included in the pricing formula, but was removed from the group of comparator nations in 2022 — because U.S. drug prices are an insane global outlier. 
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Does COVID mess up your immune system? Scientists say yes.

Immunologists and epidemiologists are coalescing around the view that COVID weakens our immune systems, making us more likely to catch other things — and get sicker from them when we do.

Why it's important: This week’s story #2 actually comes from me.

Since the phase-out of pandemic restrictions at the end of 2021, illness patterns have been… weird. Only in the past few years has the public been exposed to endless headlines about group A strep, and “walking pneumonia.” We invented the word “triple-demic” (see also: “quad-demic”). I wanted to understand what was behind this, so I spent more than five months interviewing scientists, physicians, and families stuck in a relentless cycle of illness. What I wrote is just the tip of the iceberg, more to come. 
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Paid plasma is back — and reigniting old fears

After the tainted blood scandal of the ‘80s, Canada vowed to never pay donors again. Now, a deal between Canadian Blood Services and a Spanish biopharma company is bringing that model back.

Why it’s important: 17 paid-plasma clinics are opening across the country. Critics say we’re repeating history and exploiting people. Proponents say we need to reduce our reliance on U.S. plasma and prepare for supply chain shocks.

The move towards paid plasma has reignited fears rooted in the Krever Commission, which advised against paying donors after 2,000 people were infected with HIV and up to 30,000 with Hep C 35–45 years ago. Today, Canada collects just 27 per cent of the plasma it needs domestically. The rest comes largely from U.S. donors, who are paid. Demand is rising fast, as autoimmune diseases become more common. 
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FDA vaccine czar’s ouster a warning of things to come

RFK Jr.’s health department is sidelining science in favour of radical deregulation. And it's just the beginning.

Why it’s important: Dr. Peter Marks says he was pushed out of the FDA after refusing to validate antivax narratives and unsafe stem-cell treatments. In his resignation, Marks said RFK wants “subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”

Meanwhile, the regime has launched three new “medical journals.” With the resources of the U.S. health sciences apparatus behind them, these are poised to become pipelines for junk science. Once laundered through future reviews and meta-analyses, studies from these journals will be hard to spot — even for well-meaning physicians and public health experts. Marks’ exit is one small part of the dismantling of U.S. health sciences infrastructure. It’s also an early signal of how that same infrastructure can be repurposed and weaponized.
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Alberta’s chief medical officer is MIA during the measles response

With measles spreading across the province (and country) people are asking: Where is Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health?

Why it’s important: While B.C., Sask., and Ont. have put their CMoHs out there, Alberta’s is notably absent. The province told CBC that Dr. Mark Joffe will speak “should the situation escalate,” suggesting his role may hinge on political clearance.

As measles spreads provincewide and vaccination rates languish, science-led communication is a must. People ought to know, for example, that measles wipes out your immune system’s memory, making you vulnerable to every pathogen you’ve ever been exposed to, or been vaccinated for. Experts say the province has a rapidly closing window to inform and protect the public — and is blowing it. 
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Québec to make it harder for doctors to go from public to private system

Ontarians and Albertans, here’s a bit of a window into how today’s changes could play out a few years down the road.

Why it’s important: Québec wants Santé Québec, its new amalgamated health agency, to review and approve any doctor trying to move from public to private practice. Private sector opt-outs are up 80 per cent since 2020.

Any doctor seeking to “go private” would need to make a compelling case that their public sector departure won’t harm care access in the region. But opposition parties and the province’s medical regulator say the move doesn’t go far enough — and that Health Minister Christian Dubé is offloading responsibility to the agency instead of simply banning the practice himself. 
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