Book Review:
Corrupt to The Core by Shiv Chopra
If you have read The China Study by T.S. Campbell you will learn about corruption and all kinds of conflict of interest cases within the America Federal bureaucracy in many areas of food regulation. Some of it is just plain unbelievable. If you are Canadian you might be thinking that couldn’t happen here. Well the sad part is, it does. The pharmaceutical lobbies are just as active here as they are the USA. Decision effecting the health of Canadians are often made with scant appreciation of the medical facts and in accordance with pharmaceutical company wishes.
The book covers about 35 years of employment by Shiv Chopra, a health scientist, in Health Canada. Shiv is Indian and brown and experienced a lot of racial bias and pressure to approve drugs from superiors in the department. This is a real eye opener because Canadians sort of view themselves as enlightened when it comes to race relations especially at the Federal level. The book is highly detailed and goes from race to health, to corruption and back again repeatedly in the book. For this reason, it is not an easy read but one that is a must read because it dramatically shows that you cannot trust Health Canada. This would be an absolute shock to most Canadians but then most have not read the book. Shiv and other went public on radio and TV to reveal the pressures they were under to approve certain drugs they considered unsafe. This group of 6 scientists would not approve Bovine Growth Hormone, Baytril and or Revelor-H. Unfortunately, they were unable to prevent GMO from entering Canada. This book had a huge bearing on Indian policy banning Monsanto GMO products in India.
It is a good historical record and one that deserves more exposure in Canada just so Canadian realize that if they want to be healthy, they need to do their own due diligence and not rely on Health Canada for guidance.
Comments