Gary Meyerhoff
When PM John Howard promised a $30 million trial of retractable syringes in November 2001, the harm reduction sector saw it as another attack on the human rights of people who use illicit drugs. Three years later, the trial has commenced and we are still framing our response on the basis that the trial is part of Howard's war on drugs.
Little did we that know that the trial of retractable syringes is really a smokescreen for a global push to capitalise on the latest medical novelty device. The retractable syringe is a mega-fraud of chilling proportions, set in motion by former federal health minister Michael Wooldridge before he resigned from parliament in September 2001.
After aggressive lobbying from syringe manufacturers, in July 2000 the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy set up a sub-committee to develop an options paper and cost benefits analysis on retractable syringes. Wooldridge would have been present at the meeting, or if not he would have been privy to the discussions that took place around these syringes.
At least seven Australian companies stand to make a killing from the introduction of retractables. For them, the "Wooldridge trial" is the backdoor to distribution across the board, and not just into needle/syringe programs. Unitract, Analytica, Medigard, Ensi-Med, Occupational Medical Innovations, Eastland Medical Systems and Ritract are just some of the companies who are trying to break into the market.
Ritract stands out for the fact that it has Wooldridge on its team. The company also aims to buy out other retractable syringe patents.
The introduction of retractable syringes in Australia has been through the back door. The trial of these devices in Australian needle/syringe programs has been veiled in secrecy, possibly to prevent the media and the public from making the Wooldridge connection.
Underpinning the premise that the world "needs" these 21st century syringes, is the inescapable fact that unsafe injecting practices continue to play a major role in the spread of blood-borne viruses such as HIV and hepatitis C. But that is one of the few truisms in what is a lie of gargantuan proportions.
The retractable will cost as much as 10 times more than conventional syringes, threatening to trigger an increase in unsafe injecting practices in health-care settings in developing countries and among people who inject illicit drugs.
Health-care workers in developing countries are forced to re-use syringes because they do not have the funds to purchase the necessary medical equipment. People who inject illicit drugs share injecting equipment when they don't have access to alternatives.
There is no "ultimate solution" to unsafe injecting practices, but syringe companies could put a major dent in the HIV pandemic by donating syringes to countries that can't afford them and by aggressively lobbying governments to end the failed war on drugs.
Syringe manufacturing is a multi-billion-dollar industry dominated by three corporate giants: Becton Dickinson, Tyco Healthcare (a division of Kendall) and Terumo, and their market power allows them to keep syringe costs artificially high. An inevitable result is the re-use of syringes by health-care workers in developing countries and in some regions by people who inject illicit drugs.
The only challenge remaining for the drug-delivery industry is to sell their lie to the rest of the world — a task made easier by US global hegemony and the various "free trade" agreements that are spreading like a cancer around the globe.
If you believe the syringe companies, the numbers of health-care workers living with HIV or Hep C because of needle-stick injuries at work have reached plague proportions. Terumo tells us that 600,000 to 800,000 such injuries occur annually in the US. Unitract claims that in 1998 at least 13,000 health-care workers in Australian hospitals had a needle-stick injury. If true, this is an unbelievable 35 per day.
This seems highly unlikely in light of statistics provided by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which reported a total of 11,784 exposures to blood and body fluids from June 1996 through to November 2000.
What the manufacturers don't tell us is that injuries from hypodermic needles are only a small component of overall needle-stick injuries. Manufacturers are using the term needle-stick injury to describe a range of percutaneous (skin penetration) injuries, which put health-care workers at risk of contracting a blood-borne virus.
There are many cheaper ways to reduce the risk of blood-borne virus transmission from hypodermic needle injuries than introducing retractable syringes. According to the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, "Work conditions that might contribute to an increase in the number of needle-stick injuries include: staff reductions where nurses, laboratory personnel and students assume additional duties; difficult patient care situations; and working at night with reduced lighting".
This is not to say that needle-stick injury is not an issue that needs to be addressed. In Australia, three health-care workers have died as a result of exposure to HIV in health-care settings since 1993. The issue at stake here is the motive of the corporations, beating up hysteria in order to maximise profits. The needle-stick issue pales in comparison to the millions of people dying from HIV because of unsafe injecting practices.
Syringe manufacturers have adopted tactics of deception, asserting that needle-stick injuries and unsafe injecting practices, and the subsequent risk of blood-borne virus transmission, can be avoided by the use of their product. They have ignored the complexity of the issues faced by health-care workers in developing countries and people who inject drugs across the globe.
Nearly three-million people died of HIV-related causes in 2003. If syringe manufacturers and their drug-producing allies are allowed to continue their reign, this figure will continue to grow. It is time we did something about it.
[This article is abridged from the Syringate dossier produced by the NT Network Against Prohibition. For the full text, see .]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, October 13, 2004.
Visit the