Alan Cassels is a drug policy researcher affiliated with the School of Health Information Sciences at the University of Victoria. He has worked on a variety of research and evaluation studies for the past ten years focusing on the impact of provincial drug benefits policies on consumers and has specialized in examining how clinical research information and experience on drugs gets communicated to policy-makers, prescribers and consumers.
Alan led the first ever evaluation of Canadian newspaper coverage of new drugs (published in April 2003 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal) and he has frequently reported on consumer issues relating to pharmaceuticals for magazines, newspapers and the CBC Radio program IDEAS.
He is co-author, with Australian journalist Ray Moynihan of the book, Selling Sickness, (Greystone Books, 2005) about the role of the pharmaceutical industry in helping to create and market illness.
BC’s Provincial Health Officer Dr Perry Kendall announced in August that BC will be adopting a policy mandating flu shots for health care workers. Or they have to wear masks. This is likely the most aggressive flu prevention policy in Canada, one which could set the trend for the rest of the country. But Dr… View Article
The world spent billions on medication and vaccine stockpiles because the World Health Organization cried wolf. If the WHO cannot cleanse its ties to the industrialists hungry for profits in exaggerating the severity of disease in order to sell treatments, why should we ever again listen to anything they say?… View Article
I have said this before and this recent research begs me to say this again: Someday we will look back on society’s zeal for checking and chemically altering our blood cholesterol in the same way we now regard blood letting and purging: A medical barbarity that good science cannot support…. View Article
