Pubdate: Fri, 30 May 2014
Source: Vancouver 24hours (CN BC)
Copyright: 2014 Vancouver 24 hrs.
Contact: http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/letters
Website: http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3837
Author: Michael Mui
Page: 3

HEROIN STUDY ALLOWED TEMPORARILY

Providence Health Care will be allowed to prescribe heroin for a
clinical study until a decision is rendered after a court trial
sometime next year

A PROVIDENCE HEALTH CARE program to give 202 addicts prescription
heroin to compare the drug's affect to replacement medication has been
given the green light by the courts. Providence Health Care's
controversial prescription heroin study can proceed once again after
an injunction was approved by the B.C. Supreme Court Thursday.

That means the study's 202 patients can apply to Health Canada for
Swiss-imported prescription heroin until a decision is made in a trial
in which the federal government and local health authorities are
expected to clash.

The conflict began i n September last year when Canada's Health
Minister Rona Ambrose stopped it in its tracks after 16 patients in
the study got prescription heroin approval.

Pivot Legal Society lawyer Adrienne Smith, who represented five
patients in the case, said even though a total of 21 patients were
approved for the drug before Canada banned the test, they couldn't get
their meds.

"The supplier just went into paralysis-mode" after the government's
announcement, she said.

Joseph Arvay, a l awyer representing Providence, said the federal
government insisted that doctors use hydromorphone - which he calls an
unproven heroin substitute, despite its legal status - instead of
prescription heroin, which a previous study showed as being more
effective in addiction treatment than methadone.

"The whole point of the study - which the federal government was
funding - was to determine whether hydromorphone was as effective as
heroin," Arvay said.

"We have scores of studies all over the world about the effectiveness
of heroin. We have no studies on the effectiveness of intravenous
hydromorphone for opiate addiction."

In a previous study conducted betwe e n 2 0 0 5 and 2008, researchers
at Providence found most of 25 patients who used hydromorphone
couldn't tell the difference between that drug and heroin.

But Arvay said that finding was a byproduct of the earlier study,
which only intended to test heroin versus methadone.

The $7.4-million Canadian Institutes of Health Research-funded study
is expected to conclude in late 2015.

Meanwhile, Arvay said the court trial would likely take place next
year. There is a condition to obtain prescription heroin according to
the court.

Only those in the Providence SALOME study are allowed, and they must
be resistant to other treatments.
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