One of the things I have to point out is that we are entering into a new era in the treatment of cancer with targeted therapies. Of course, there's a very expensive price tag that goes along with that. If we want to have access to these drugs, we have to find ways of funding them. Needless to say, in situations where pharmaceutical companies are not able to manage a proper return on their money, they don't even launch them, and that's what's happened in one case, at least.
To make a long story short, I think what's happening right now is we're entering into a new era, and we're faced with these high costs. For example, when I was first diagnosed with colorectal cancer the treatment was 5-Fluorouracil, and they were deciding whether to add a couple of components--Levamisole or Leucovorin. We were talking $500 a patient to start off with. Now we could be talking $150,000 patient for the full course of treatment. That's probably what started the ball rolling, but at the end of the day, that doesn't mean we should deprive Canadians of this newest technology, which actually is making a difference.
I'll point out that one of the slides that Dr. Jean Maroun has raised at our parliamentary breakfast on numerous occasions is childhood leukemia. If we don't continue to make these advances and progress along the way, we'll never get the cure.