Sure. Thank you for that question.
The interesting thing in arthritis is that of the 4.6 million Canadians with arthritis, about one million have inflammatory arthritis, for whom the biologic therapies I was referring to are relevant. Most Canadians have osteoarthritis, which is the progressive deterioration of the joints, for which right now the only treatment is a joint replacement, other than pain management and, as you were pointing out, non-pharmacological options. We shouldn't ever lose sight of the need for non-medicine options, whether it's physiotherapy, exercise, diet, nutrition, and so on, to prevent the progression of disease.
Generally speaking, people with arthritis are not necessarily well served by the medications that are available today, and yet there are huge numbers of people.... We're not talking about orphan diseases with small populations who need very expensive designer drugs, but about millions of Canadians who have progressive osteoarthritis and wait in the queue for years until their disease progresses to a point where a joint replacement may or may not be appropriate. We think there's a lot more need for more new treatments than exist today to alleviate their disease and their pain without having to go through surgeries—which in turn cost the health care system money—because we have no other treatment to prevent disease progression.
As far as orphan diseases are concerned, it wouldn't be my expertise to comment on whether or not we make those drugs available or on what basis we might provide catastrophic drug treatments for orphan diseases.
I'm sure you would, Doug.