Health Committee on March 5th, 2013

[Dr. Aled Edwards]

Canada led, I should add.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

The next question you mentioned a little bit on¸ but I'll ask you anyway. You mentioned six years to three years. The technology that you're using to come across these discoveries, how's that changing? Is it developing and improving so instead of taking six years the technology now allows you to do it six months? How is that evolving?

[Dr. Aled Edwards]

Yes, it's a little bit faster but nine women can't make a baby in one month, right?

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Dr. Aled Edwards]

Biology takes some time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

We could try.

[Dr. Aled Edwards]

You could try.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

With all due respect, Doctor, it would take a man to make that kind of statement.

[Dr. Aled Edwards]

It's actually attributed to my wife.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Now you're blaming your wife.

[Dr. Aled Edwards]

I think it's brilliant.

Technologies are getting faster, but when people get sick it takes a while to see if they're getting better and you need to be careful with toxicology tests. In that six-year period, two years were negotiating between the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard and a drug company. They couldn't come to a deal and the guy had to move universities to do the experiment. So from six to three isn't all due to peace, love, sharing, and stuff but a lot is.

I think that in total, if this happens on a mammoth scale, you'll have dramatically decreased cost in time. And because we all share up front, pharma can't say I'm going to sell it to you, the health care system, for $100,000 because I paid for a lot of research on this. You'll say, no, we shared, we have the exact numbers, this only cost you this much. You should see a good argument from single payers to drive the costs of medicines down because we de-risk it for them.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

I just have one quick last point then. When you have the compound—I think you mentioned a compound that's ready—you can basically serve that up to any pharmaceutical company around the world and say, good luck.

[Dr. Aled Edwards]

That's what we did. Two professors made the key discoveries and then what a pharma will do, they won't use ours, they'll just invent another one, which is easy. But we did the key experiment showing if you block this protein, the cancer gets better. Then they say, thank you, we'll compete.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

You have another minute if you want it.

I have a question if you don't.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Go ahead.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you.

This is astounding because this is the prevention of disease. We have a big pie of money that goes out for health care and we have an aging demographic—all the things that you were talking about, Dr. Edwards.

My question to you is: have you had any opposition at all to setting up this framework?

[Dr. Aled Edwards]

Yes. We hear it from professors. Why would you work down here? The exciting stuff is here from biotechnology companies. Patents are key. I don't understand why you would not want a patent. We get it from some people in pharma, but pharma has now flipped. We have the heads of the global leaders saying this is a great idea. They did it with us once and we said we have another project for you, this CareforAir. They say, “We're there. We love the model.” We need to build on it in Canada or we're going to get our asses kicked eventually.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

What are you going to do? You have this big get-together in July. What are you going to do to convince everybody else?

[Dr. Aled Edwards]

If we have strong leadership, we shouldn't care what anyone else thinks. We just need to convince a few people who matter. I've convinced the head of R and D at Takeda, the head of R and D at Glaxo, and the head of neuroscience in four companies. Alain Beaudet in CIHR is there. There's going to be a lot of blah, blah, blah, but we have to ignore it because this is a new way of doing stuff. When you disrupt things, things happen.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

They're going to really disrupt me because I'm going over time. The committee checks all the logging.

[Dr. Aled Edwards]

I'm the one who keeps talking.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

The fact of the matter is that this is amazing. I'm so glad that you two came today to this committee.

We'll now go into five-minute committee questions.

Thank you, Mr. Lobb.

Dr. Morin.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Let me start by commending you for your questions. They are excellent.

I want to say that I support technological advancements in genomics research. I believe they are key to the future of health care, both in Canada and around the world.

Dr. Meulien, you did not reassure me, however, regarding the problem mentioned by my colleagues, Dr. Fry and Dr. Sellah. They raised the issue of discrimination based on genetic information and the fact that, unlike other developed countries, Canada has no anti-discrimination legislation. I'm glad Dr. Fry talked about private insurers, which you did not discuss. It's a good idea to examine that aspect.

This morning, I met with representatives from a collective of organizations called Neurological Health Charities Canada. They told me just how much discrimination their members can face when they suffer from degenerative neurological conditions. For example, they described discrimination encountered by family members of individuals with Huntington's disease when those family members apply for jobs and attempt to access employer insurance plans.

That kind of review of genomic information could lead to discrimination because not only could the person be denied coverage under a private insurance plan, but the employer could also consider it to be legal. Most people have a private insurance plan to cover various costs that are not paid for under the public system. Someone could be discriminated against for genomic reasons. An employer may not want to hire that person because the employer knows that certain risk factors are inherent to the individual's medical condition, which could end up being very costly for the employer down the road.

You said that a number of people do not agree with you and do not think we are well protected in Canada. You did nothing to reassure me. Can you make a stronger argument than that? Otherwise, I will still have serious reservations.

[Dr. Pierre Meulien]

All I can say is more or less what I said in response to the first question. The discussion about private insurance is ongoing. So it's important to examine that element closely with the Privy Council, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and other appropriate authorities. We'll keep a close eye on those discussions.

I had a sounder argument as far as health and access to—

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

There's no problem in that respect. I understand your position.