The case involving Dr. Nancy Olivieri, the drug company Apotex, and its product deferiprone, has not as far as I know received much if any attention on this side of the US/Canadian border. Bryan's post is the first time I've heard of Olivieri, but I've looked her up on a couple of search engines.
For backgound of those who might be interested, here’s a link to an opinion piece summarizing this episode.
http://www.mcmaster.ca/mufa/turk.htm
And as regards the principle of caution, here’s an excerpt from a statement by Dr. Olivieri herself.
“The [...] issue to be considered in drug development must be the precautionary principle, which states that where doubt exists, and where human lives and health may be at stake, individuals in authority do not proceed without a reasonable assurance that it is safe to do so. If this is in doubt, ethics dictate that we err on the side of caution. Throughout history, this principle has been stated in many different documents, including The Nuremberg Code, The Declaration of Helsinki, Canadian common law, and The Hippocratic Oath.”
Her entire statement is available at--
http://varsity.utoronto.ca:16080/arc...rotecting.html
In a way, both the Olivieri case and the current Hayes/Syngenta/atrazine controversy involve some of the same issues that came up in another thread, on Pharmanex and its panel of supposedly objective scientists, but with one important difference: with Pharmanex there are no obvious threats to human health involved. Another difference: the Olivieri case involves a prescription drug, one that in the US would be under the jurisdiction of the FDA, while Pharmanex is in the business of selling over-the-counter supplements that are subject to no regulation whatsoever.
But going back to the point about supplements not involving human health, this is not at all accurate. In an earlier post, Bryan pointed out that products for human consumption may contain the neural products [think mad cow disease] that are prohibited in animal foods.