A recent report charging that a controversial Vancouver safe-injection site for heroin users is ineffective is being blasted by a leading researcher as biased, the Canadian Press reported May 4.

A new online publication called the Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice published a study from Colin Mangham, a board member of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada who has a Ph.D. in community health. "Treating drug use as simply a lifestyle option to seek ways to help people use drugs non-problematically is not really defensible scientifically or socially," said Mangham, who has written opinion articles critical of harm reduction in publications like the Canadian Medical Association Journal and the Canadian Journal of Public Health.

But researcher Thomas Kerr of the B.C. Center for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, who has published studies on Vancouver's Insite program in peer-reviewed journals like the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, branded the journal piece a commentary, not a research article. "He writes opinion pieces, he doesn't do research," Kerr said

Kerr's studies have concluded that public drug use and needle sharing have decreased since Insite began operations. Mangham said of Kerr's 13 published studies: "The fact is, their science wasn't good."

Mangham refused to disclose the funding source of his study, which Kerr said would be unacceptable to a credible journal.