Carleton’s Marc-André Gagnon has been awarded the Catalyst Grant in Ethics for an innovative research project that will examine the behaviour of the pharmaceutical industry in Canada. The grant money will be used to discover how the pharmaceutical industry’s drive for profits can be reconciled with public health. Funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the grant is worth $42,000 per year for two years.
As principal investigator on the project, Gagnon will work with co-investigator Jillian Clare Kohler, a professor at the University of Toronto with expertise in international drug regulation and pharmaceutical policy. The project aims to map the biopharmaceutical innovation system and assess the ethical behavior of pharmaceutical companies in Canada. It will examine how the profit-motive is embedded in the pharmaceutical market structure and will seek to discover if the structure can be re-organized to better serve the interests of the public.
The project germinated while Gagnon worked at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University between 2010 and 2012. His interest was drawn to the Canadian system because of the unique attributes of the pharmaceutical industry in this country.
“Canada has very specific dynamics in this sector, with massive financial subsidies supporting the industry and a very inefficient system for drug coverage,” said Gagnon. “I think that with the team of amazing experts we’ve gathered for this project, we will produce very significant research outcomes that will help policymakers introduce regulatory reforms in this sector.”
Recently, Gagnon’s public calls for a universal pharmacare system in Canada have drawn significant media attention.
“This project is not directly related to universal pharmacare, but it is another dimension of the pharmaceutical sector,” said Gagnon. “Universal pharmacare is one possible way to build a countervailing power to reduce the ongoing institutional corruption of the pharmaceutical sector.” Here, he is quick to add that even if there is no overt corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, corruption is implicit in the profit-driven nature of the institutions involved.
The research project will benefit from the expertise of six collaborators from the University of Massachusetts, Queen’s University, McGill University, York University, the University of British Columbia and the University of Toronto.
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About Marc-André Gagnon:
Gagnon is an assistant professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration. He is a research fellow with the Pharmaceutical Policy Research Collaboration and with the Edmond J. Safra Centre for Ethics at Harvard University. He holds a PhD in political science from York University and a Masters of Advanced Study in History of Economic Thought from Paris-1 Sorbonne and Ecole Normale Superieure de Fontenay/St-Cloud. He is an expert in social and health policy, political economy and the history of economic thought, and pharmaceutical policy and regulation.
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