Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to speak on the bill. I commend my colleague for London West. I have listened to the debate today. We have discussed the intricacies of the brain. We have also discussed numerous illnesses of the brain.
The brain is indeed a very complex organ. Attention should be given to the brain. I feel strongly that we are not aware of how important the brain is to us. Everything we look at, everything we do, every philosophy we have has been generated by the functioning of our brain. It is an extremely important organ and we know very little about it.
My colleague from the Bloc commented on the mapping of the brain. It was not long ago that we thought memory had a specific location in our brain. Experiments that have been done on Parkinson's disease have shown that one can have very small
sections of the brain stimulated and suddenly start singing the Coca-Cola song or something.
We now realize that the brain is functioning like the rest of our body based on chemical components. It is the chemical structure of our body that allows messages to pass through the synapses, making us function and do things that we think are very important to our lifestyle and to build the societies we need.
We talk about brain disorders. Someone here previously mentioned that five million Canadians are suffering from brain disorders. It was also mentioned that a considerable amount of the health care dollar is spent on conditions involving the brain, which is true, but this does not seem to be a situation that is going to go away rapidly. We do not cure a condition of the brain in six weeks like we do a fracture of the arm or some other bone.
Disabilities of the brain can vary from very minute kinds of behaviour pattern to extreme disorders. We really do not know why this is happening. It is very essential that we look at this organ and try to understand it so we can better understand our own lives.
For example, in my background of psychiatric nursing I have had the opportunity to witness and work with people who are totally incapable of dressing themselves. They do not know how to put on their pants. They will stick their arm in the pant leg. On the other hand, the particular young man I am thinking of could be given questions like: "What is the total of 2,925 plus-?" One could go on and on with a list of figures. He could have the answer by the time one was finished saying what the figures were. Yet here was a man who was totally incapable of functioning in any other way. All that was required to get his mathematical mind going was the bribe of a cup of coffee. He was very serviceable in the accounting department and that seemed to be his role. Those were the days before computers.
The other thing we tend to think about is the human brain. We have to also consider what has happened over the years in relation to our awareness of animal brains. We are now looking at the possibility of not being the only species that is capable of thinking. There is a tremendous amount of research being done on dolphins. We are gradually becoming aware that other animals do indeed communicate. This is something that has come about because of some people's awareness of the brain, its intricacies, its unknown powers, et cetera.
We do not actually know what we are capable of doing. We hear people talk about having a sixth sense, ESP. Some of us think that we know what that means; some of us do not. Some of us are very capable of carrying that out. Obviously there is a mechanism in our brain that could be developed along this line. Again, we do not know because of lack of research or whatever.
Also with regard to awareness, we seem to be more aware of the mysteries and the wonders of outer space, for example. That can be common coffee table talk in restaurants or wherever. Yet we do not even know the capabilities of our own brain or our own head, our capabilities of what we as a species can do. We wonder about outer space and this kind of thing. We are more aware of that than what actually makes us who we are. Nothing that we have achieved to date would be here were it not for the capabilities of our brain, and yet we still do not understand how it functions.
A few years ago schizophrenia was thought to be, and some aspects of schizophrenia are still thought to be, a behavioural disorder. Through research it has been discovered that there is a physiological situation involved in our bodies that creates some diagnoses of schizophrenia.
Another tremendous condition affecting us today in our present lifestyles is depression. We really do not know why we get into the various states of depression, yet we have all kinds of drugs and all kinds of people taking these drugs for depression. We are rapidly moving into a situation in our society where we are going to have a pill for everything. You can probably change your personality if you just start taking medication.
We realize that the brain is totally dependent on the chemical constitution of its environment. We also realize that it is very very subject to trauma. There have been situations in which trauma has occurred and we do not understand why. It is not only trauma. It can be stroke as well. Certain people are left with aphasias. These conditions can differ as well. Some people can say only half a word. Some people know what they want to say. For example, they know it is an ashtray but they cannot remember the name so they say "something to put your cigarette in". This is debilitating for them in their existence. We do not know how to help them help themselves.
I strongly advocate that the decade of the brain, and I realize that we are about halfway through it, be recognized. I think that our awareness as a species is inadequate. I would also suggest that it not only happen once in a lifetime but that it happen probably once every hundred years, if it is going to take this kind of legislation or this kind of awareness to make us aware that we do not know very much about ourselves and what we are capable of doing.