Joel Lexchin received his MD from the University of Toronto in 1977 and for the past 34 years has been an emergency physician at the University Health Network. He is Professor Emeritus in the School of Health Policy and Management at York University and an Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. From 1992-94 he was a member of the Ontario Drug Quality and Therapeutics Committee and he was the chair of the Drugs and Pharmacotherapy Committee of the Ontario Medical Association from 1997-99. He has been a consultant for the province of Ontario, various arms of the Canadian federal government, the World Health Organization and the government of New Zealand. He is the author or co-author of over 275 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on multiple aspects of Canadian and international pharmaceutical policy. His book Private profits versus public policy: the pharmaceutical industry and the Canadian state was published by University of Toronto Press in 2016 and his most recent book Doctors in denial: why Big Pharma and the Canadian medical profession are too close for comfort was published in 2017 by Lorimer. In 2012 he was elected as a Fellow in the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. He is listed by Stanford University’s among the world’s top 2% most widely cited scientists.