I'll apologize up-front for harping once again on the topic of sanctimonious pharmacists whose idea of service is to impose their draconian, religious views on their customers but I'll justify the next article or three on this subject in two ways:
- I'll try to concentrate on recent developments, and
- I'll concentrate on the Canadian connection.
It so happens that, recently, there were a few letters/op-eds published in our national newspaper, the Mope and Wail. A number of them involved, in some way, one Garth McCutcheon, president of the Canadian Pharmacists' Association, so it behooves us to trundle on over to the Globe's web site and search on a combination of "McCutcheon" and "pharmacist", at which point we find these results.
The first thing you'll notice is that you have to pay money to access any of them, and I'll be damned if I'm going to pony up $4.95 so I can read someone's letter to the editor. This means that we're going to suck whatever information we can out of those opening teasers before moving on and, amazingly, those previews can be surprisingly informative.
Assuming you see the same results that I do, let's take them in chronological order. Starting on April 1 of this year, we have the aforementioned Mr. McCutcheon, with what appears to be a letter to the editor regarding something called "Plan B", in which he opens:
Re Make Plan B Easy (March 30): The long-awaited decision by Health Canada to move Plan B off prescription status is an excellent example of increasing access for Canadian women to emergency contraception while maintaining an appropriate level of intervention by a pharmacist to ensure proper use of the drug and deal with related issues.
If you need an intro to Plan B, well, I suggest here:
OTTAWA. April 20, 2005 –Emergency contraception (ECP) is now available without a doctor’s prescription across Canada. Plan B, Canada’s only approved emergency contraceptive, will now be available behind pharmacy counters.
“This is great news for women,” says Linda Capperauld, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada. “Now we face the challenge of making sure that Canadian women know how to access ECP, and that they can get it before they need it.”
ECP, sometimes referred to as the morning-after pill, has a long-standing history of being a simple, safe, and effective option for women to prevent pregnancy. Now women all across Canada will be able to get Plan B at their local pharmacy. Since ECP is more effective the earlier it is used, timely access is vital. Making ECP available without a prescription is a significant step in making it more accessible to women.
That's reasonably clear, so one wonders just what McCutcheon can add to it. Well, just from his opening snippet, we can see that, while he seems to be in favour of increased access to emergency contraception for Canadian women, he's also clearly worried about "maintaining an appropriate level of intervention by a pharmacist to ensure proper use of the drug and deal with related issues."
Um ... excuse me? And just what "intervention" role would the pharmacist have to play in all of this, beyond taking payment and handing over the pills? Sadly, because of my miserly nature, we'll never know here but, no matter -- we're far from done.
More than a month later (as you can see), we have the same Mr. McCutcheon, with yet another contribution to the comments page:
Today's Paper: Wednesday, May 4, 2005 12:00 AM Page A24
Re Heather Mallick's rant on pharmacists (Why Do We Have To See A Pharmacist The Morning After? -- April 30): We believe the long-awaited decision by Health Canada to move Plan B off prescription status is an excellent example of increasing access for Canadian women to emergency contraception while maintaining an appropriate level of intervention (by a pharmacist, rather than a physician) to ensure it is used appropriately and deal with related issues.
Ignoring his snarky and childish reference to someone else's "rant," notice anything odd about McCutcheon's piece? And, boy oh boy, does it look familiar or what? McCutcheon really does have his talking points down, don't he, almost word for word.
In fact, just for the entertainment value, let's give Google something to do and ask it to find anything related to all of the following phrases: "increasing access", "Canadian women", "emergency contraception" and "intervention". Man, that's pretty specific so you'd be forgiven in thinking we're not going to get a lot of hits.
Oooooh ... lookee here. While some of these hits are obviously not related to what we're after, it's just as obvious that our Mr. McCutcheon is one busy guy. He's here, describing Plan B as:
"... an excellent example of increasing access for Canadian women to emergency contraception (EC) while maintaining an appropriate level of intervention by a pharmacist to ensure proper use of the drug and deal with related issues."
And here:
"... an excellent example of increasing access for Canadian women to emergency contraception (EC) while maintaining an appropriate level of intervention by a pharmacist to ensure proper use of the drug and deal with related issues."
And here, this time in a letter for the Ottawa Citizen, describing Plan B as (you guessed it):
"... an excellent example of increasing access for Canadian women to emergency contraception while maintaining an appropriate level of intervention by pharmacists, rather than physicians, to ensure it is used appropriately and related issues are dealt with."
But wait! What's this? This letter isn't by McCutcheon. Rather, it's from Jeff Poston, the executive director of (how thoroughly predictable) the Canadian Pharmacists Association. Obviously, all of these folks read from the same playbook.
And here, we have what appears to be a letter in the National Post, with no listed author but, hey, let's see if we can guess who wrote it:
The long-awaited decision by Health Canada to move Plan B — an emergency contraceptive that, if taken within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse, can reduce the risk of pregnancy by up to 90% — off prescription status is an example of increasing access for Canadian women to emergency contraception while maintaining an appropriate level of intervention by a pharmacist to ensure proper use of the drug.
McCutcheon? Poston? Does it matter? The same tedious, repetitive rubbish, with the same paternalistic, condescending attitute that women who want to get their hands on some emergency contraception would really benefit from a good, misogynstic talking-to, yessiree.
Anyway, in terms of being Part 1, that should be sufficient to set the stage for what I intend to be a savage beating, CC-style, of McCutcheon, Poston and perhaps a few more of the Neanderthals at the Canadian Pharmacists' Association.
And I write this without having actually done the additional research yet so I better damned well be right about this, or it's gonna be some kind of embarrassing, isn't it?
2 comments:
an appropriate level of intervention by a pharmacist
I've heard this phrase used before from the same crowd - describing codeine. What they mean by it isn't "the pharmicist gives you a stern talking to about the morality of using the drug", but rather "the pharmicist makes sure that you don't chase your pills down with vodka."
This is particularly evident when one of the statements expands upon it to suggest that pharmacists are better served dispensing contraception than doctors are (which, frankly, is true - why the hell should birth control be issued via prescription? There isn't a substantial reason) - they're not arguing for restriction of birth control, but indeed greater access (enabled by your wondrous pharmacist, natch).
This isn't paternalism, but rather self-promotion, I think.
You make some good points, but I'd be careful about trying to draw parallels between codeine and emergency contraception (EC), particularly if EC is off-prescription.
It's one thing if the pharmacist makes sure you understand the proper procedure for taking the drug, it's another if their goal is to "counsel" you out of taking it.
And be patient -- we're not done here.
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