Unfortunately, I wasn't able to listen to Dr. Gulenchyn's testimony, but I certainly encourage you to pursue this, because the reason I'm here before you is I had a different interpretation of the middle-of-the-night sitting of Parliament. I did not agree with your colleague who called it Parliament's finest hour. I thought it was shocking, and I wrote to a number of MPs by email to say how disturbed I was that Parliament would meet in the middle of the night and at excessive speed agree to legislation. It's not because I'm concerned about the safety of the reactor--that doesn't frighten me at all--but the overruling of a regulatory authority, if there had not truly been a crisis, concerns me enormously. So I certainly encourage you to pursue it.
To the best of my medical knowledge, I've been struggling to think of a nuclear medicine procedure that cannot be achieved by another medium, another technique. Studies of the thyroid gland with radioactive iodine would be one example where it's difficult to obtain the same information otherwise. But apparently radioactive iodine comes from different sources, according to my information.
Radioisotopes are very seldom used for emergency treatment. I have not personally been able to come up with an example of how they might be used for emergency treatment. The most common use is to treat thyroid disorders, and that is never an emergency. It's not done on weekends or in the middle of the night, for example. So I can well believe as a doctor that there would have been substantial problems, and difficulties and embarrassments, or fear for patients. But to say, for example, that a patient with breast cancer metastatic to the bone is going to suffer or lose his or her life because we can't image those with radionuclides I don't think is true. There are other techniques to obtain those images, such as CT scanning, or MRI, or even plain X-rays.
I have not been able personally to think of an example where it was absolutely essential. If there were such examples in British Columbia, they were certainly all being serviced.