When PhD student Roderick MacIsaac was fired from the Ministry of Health, his study of an anti-smoking program that was to be used in the evaluation of B.C.’s controversial Smoking Cessation Program was halted.
The Saanich resident was one of seven Health Ministry researchers fired in 2012 after an investigation into an alleged privacy breach. The 46-year-old committed suicide five months after he was fired.
Since then, the government has apologized for MacIsaac’s “heavy-handed” dismissal and has rehired or settled lawsuits with the majority of the other workers.
Labour lawyer Marcia McNeil has been hired to probe the process of how the researchers were fired.
MacIsaac’s program evaluation did not continue, despite evidence that the two pharmaceutical drugs covered by the provincial smoking-cessation program, launched in 2011, can cause severe adverse reactions in patients, including death.
In November 2012, two months after he was fired, MacIsaac discussed his research with a former co-worker in an email provided to the Vancouver Sun.
“I was working on the 2011 Smoking Cessation Program evaluation, and my role was as a co-op student in the Ministry of Health. My job was to set up a prototype model based on a much smaller and earlier program offered by social services in 2007,” said MacIsaac, who was unable to complete his PhD and died one month after he wrote this email.
“The successes and failures of this prototype model then would be used to evaluate the much larger 2011 program.”
The email was given to the Sun by the NDP, which received permission to release it from MacIsaac’s family.
“Roderick was very interested in doing research on smoking cessation because his mother had died of lung cancer, and he had been her caregiver,” said NDP MLA Adrian Dix.
But both Dix and University of Victoria drug policy researcher Alan Cassels said MacIsaac’s work was never completed.
An article in the B.C. Medical Journal revealed this month that one of the two drugs offered by the Smoking Cessation Program — bupropion, marketed as Wellbutrin and Zyban — led to 64 hospitalizations, including 22 critical-care cases, last year in B.C.
A report by the province’s Drug and Poison Information Centre said the incidents included 47 suspected suicide attempts and one death.
Red flags have been raised for years about severe side-effects, including death, linked to the other drug offered by B.C.’s Smoking Cessation Program. Champix has received a black box warning (the highest pharmaceutical alert) in the U.S., is the subject of class-action lawsuits in B.C., Alberta and Ontario, and is no longer covered by the public pharmacare system in France.
Cassels argues B.C. needs to stop paying for Champix and Zyban until residents are assured the drugs work properly and won’t compromise health.
“Halt any government payment for this treatment and instantly commission an independent evaluation of the safety and effectiveness of this drug,” he said.
When asked if B.C. should launch an independent review, Health Minister Terry Lake noted more than 26,000 B.C. residents take Zyban to quit smoking and said it is safe if used according to doctors’ advice.
“These drugs have gone through Health Canada approval, they’ve gone through the common drug review, the drug benefit council, they have been scrutinized with studies,” Lake said. “When you think of the benefits of stopping smoking, there’s no question these drugs have helped people and extended people’s lives.”
The ministry commissioned the federal government’s Drug Safety and Effectiveness Network (DSEN) to conduct a “meta analysis” — a review of all published material on a drug, including reports produced by the pharmaceutical companies.
The analysis of Champix has not yet been published, but Lake said it found when taken properly, the drug is safe, despite the potential for side-effects.
“The study found Champix and Zyban, used for smoking cessation, did not increase instances of treated depression, anxiety or self-harm,” added ministry spokeswoman Kristy Anderson.
But Cassels said such studies are clouded by the “rosiness” of the pharmaceutical company’s reports on their own drugs. “The research done by DSEN will be next to useless,” he said.
B.C.’s independent drug watchdog, the Therapeutics Initiative, asked in June 2012 to do an independent review of B.C.’s publicly funded smoking-cessation drugs. The Health Ministry declined in favour of the DSEN review.
