Gerald Caplan Pimping for Big Pharma?

Diogenes's picture

Gerald CaplanGerald Caplan is one of my favorite columnists. He is smart, caring and introspective.  It's a pity he writes for the Globe & Mail, which I call the Glop & Pail now because it definitely is no longer a newspaper-of-record.

The G&M have an internet paywall in place now. Journalism there has been replaced by columnism, led by editors like John Ibbitson and Margaret Wente, who think that their online opinions are worth $20/month (ROTFLMAO). I defer to their collective wisdom.

As Margaret Wente has proved, there is not much new at the G&M; not much that hasn't been said before or said by others.

About this latest column by Caplan.  Readers might know I am deeply opposed to Bill C-398 for all kinds of good reasons.

Caplan is completely oblivious to all of this. He ramps up the rhetoric and hyperbole even higher than our politicians have...

If you had the opportunity to save “hundreds of thousands, maybe millions” of AIDS sufferers in Africa and other poor countries, what would you do? A complete no-brainer, right? Why in the world is it even a question?

Millions of lives now? Hey Gerald, you forgot to add "and it won't cost Canadians a penny!" Free Humanitarian Aid folks! Step right up!

What is really despicable about the Caplan column is that it makes repeated references to the Stephen Lewis Foundation. There are 9 occurrences of Lewis in the article and headline.

But if you visit the Stephen Lewis Foundation website and type in C-398 or CAMR into the Site Search box, nothing comes up. There is no endorsement of Bill C-398, no mention of it at all.

Nor will you find any endorsement of Bill C-398 on the Grandmothers-To-Grandmothers Campaign website. The Canadian Access to Medicine Regime (CAMR) is a dead issue.

But  the Grandmothers Advocacy Network (GRAN) has picked up the flickering torch. GRAN is a slick lobby campaign and petition powerhouse that has duped over 23,000 people to sign and 20 MP's to stand up in the House of Commons in support of amending Canada's patent laws.

That same Caplan article also has links to supporting documentation, but curiously, no links to the GRAN website.  Maybe even Caplan is beginning to smell something funny.

But now we can save millions of lives. It won't cost us a penny. It's a no brainer folks!

Here is another video you might consider putting up on your website GRAN, or maybe you could learn from it.