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Bernard Prigent, Pfizer’s inside man

PM Harper's appointment of drug company's VP to Canadian Institutes of Health Research is also a registered lobbyist… to CIHR.



Last October, the Harper government appointed Bernard Prigent to the governing council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the federal agency that distributes about a billion dollars annually for health research. That appointment was met with near-universal condemnation from medical ethicists, because Prigent is a vice-president of Pfizer Canada, a firm that stands to profit from the decisions made at CIHR.

"There's a structural conflict of interest," explains Jocelyn Downie, the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at Dalhousie University. "On the one hand, it's [Prigent's] statutory duty to represent the best health interests of Canadians, and on the other hand, as an executive with Pfizer, he's legally bound to promote the profit interests of his company. Those competing interests will not always align, and will sometimes be in conflict."

http://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/bernard- ... id=1503474

With this kind of money on the line, how can there not be a conflict of interest.

Pfizer Reports Second-Quarter 2010 Results
For first-half 2010, revenues were $34.1 billion, an increase of 56% compared with $21.9 billion in the same period in 2009. Revenues for first-half 2010 compared with the year-ago period were favorably impacted by $10.7 billion, or 49%, due to the addition of the legacy Wyeth products, by $173 million, or 1%, due to legacy Pfizer products, and by $1.3 billion, or 6%, due to foreign exchange. U.S. revenues were $14.7 billion, an increase of 55% compared with first-half 2009. International revenues were $19.4 billion, an increase of 57% compared with the same period last year, which reflected 46% operational growth and an 11% favorable impact of foreign exchange. U.S. revenues represented 43% and international revenues represented 57% of the total in first-half 2010, both comparable with first-half 2009.
http://www.pharmanews.eu/pfizer/592-pfi ... 10-results