Firms back campaign against health bill

From the National Post:
When Tony Clement, the Health Minister, agreed last week to revamp a contentious health-products bill, he cited an opposition movement that had spread virus-like across the Internet, garnered broad and sympathetic media attention and spawned protests from Penticton to Parliament Hill.

The Web-based campaign touched a nerve with its dire warnings of an impending clampdown on users of herbs and other natural remedies.

But was the crusade that prompted Mr. Clement's climbdown truly the citizen uprising it appeared to be?

In fact, some of the campaign's alarming criticisms of Bill C-51 were themselves a matter of debate. And the seemingly grassroots movement has been driven largely by two controversial natural-health companies embroiled in drawn-out legal battles with Health Canada. One sells an unlicensed vitamin treatment for bipolar disorder, the other herbal "heart drops" for cardiac disease. ...more