International Joint Commission Action demanded on pollution control
WATER POLLUTION:
IJC Says Abatement Lags A Canadian-U.S. International Joint Commission (IJC) public meeting late last month on the progress of pollution control in boundary waters shared by both countries revealed little that was new or exciting. It only affirmed what many people already knew or suspected: pollution abatement in the Detroit and St. Clair Rivers is lagging and the public on both sides of the border wants action. A. D. P. Heeney, chairman of the Canadian section of IJC, presiding over the Windsor, Ont., meeting, told a capacity crowd in Cleary Auditorium that "While progress has been good, even excellent in some cases, it has as we all know been painfully slow in others, imperceptible in some." Further, he says, IJC shares the concern of an aroused public in both countries that now insists on a halt to continued degradation of water quality in the international waterways. The Detroit and St. Clair Rivers form the borders of Ontario and Michigan between Lake Huron and Lake Erie. The St. Marys River, the subject of a separate IJC meeting a day earlier in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., separates the Ontario and Michigan cities of Sault Ste. Marie. Specific water quality objectives for these boundary rivers were recommended by IJC in 1950 and were subsequently approved by the Canadian and U.S. governments for purposes of a boundary waters treaty, in which it had been agreed that the boundary waters would not be polluted in either country to the injury of health or property in the other. However, a report released late last year by the commission's advisory board on control of boundary waters indicates that the established objectives for the three rivers are not being met, and that the waters are being polluted by oil spills, shipping wastes, and untreated or inadequately treated municipal and industrial wastes. Generally, the commission believes, the St. Clair River conforms to IJC objectives, and has shown "sub-
stantial improvement" since an IJC survey in 1946-48. The Detroit River, on the other hand, although its water quality has improved since the 1946-48 survey, does not conform to IJC objectives in several respects. Some downstream sections, for example, are polluted up to 10 times the level of IJC's goals, according to H. W. Poston, chairman of the U.S. section of the Lakes Superior-HuronErie advisory board. As a result of the meeting, IJC will recommend to Ottawa and Washington additional control measures that might be needed.
hearings are not intended to hurt the industry, but to expose bad practices. The drug investigator explained that his committee has been trying to give all parties a chance to express their views on the issues raised during past hearings. But there are too many to be heard at once, Sen. Nelson said. To set the record straight, he said that his committee has had 44 days of hearings since the study began in May 1967. Of the 114 witnesses heard so far, 44 have been from the drug industry, "far and away the largest single group." Dr. McGill did agree that one good effect of the hearings has been that drug firms are taking a second look at their drug prices, drastically reducing them in a number of cases. Dr. McGill reserved some of his sharpest criticism for prior witnesses who testified about the wide differences between brand-name and geC&EN Photo:
Nathaniel Byrd
DRUG HEARINGS:
Committee Hears Critics The Senate Monopoly Subcommittee's 1969 investigation of the drug industry got off to a rousing start a fortnight ago when its first two witnesses for the year, a prominent Oregon physician and a Maryland psychiatrist, told the group that it was not giving the industry or the nation's medical men a fair shake. The first witness, Dr. Clinton S. McGill, who stressed that he represented no vested interest but the public, said the hearings could cripple the drug industry or hamper progress in medicine. He charged that by overemphasizing a "small number of serious side effects" of drugs, the committee's hearings "undermine the public's confidence in our pharmaceutical industry." "Many of our excellent drug products are becoming better known for their occasional harmful effects than for the enormous good they accomplish." Because of this, many patients become so alarmed that they stop taking medicines they need, Dr. McGill said. To make matters worse, he added, the study panel has "given a public forum to certain arrogant professors of pharmacology who have openly discredited the drug-prescribing abilities of the American physician." The committee chairman, Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D.-Wis.), said that Dr. McGill was playing it rather loose with his facts. He stressed that the
Witnesses Ayd (left), McGill Rousing start to committee hearings
neric versions of the same drug. The Oregon physician said that this point is academic because at least three quarters of the nation's drugs don't have generic equivalents and that he favors brand-name products rather than the generic products of "small parasitic drug companies who cash in on the research and development of the major pharmaceutical houses." To give the hearings a "more balanced record," the other committee witness, Dr. Frank J. Ayd, a psychiatrist and editor of "International Drug Therapy Newsletter," urged that the outstanding accomplishments of both physicians and the drug industry should be heard. The committee, for example, should credit the major firms for developing the psychoactive drugs that have helped to radically alter treatment of mental patients, Dr. Ayd said. He explained that, unlike the "isolated prisonlike" asylums in the predrug era of psychiatry, "some modern hospitals have almost a country club atmosphere." FEB. 3, 1969 C&EN
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