Mr. Speaker, I want to tell this House about one of my heroes. This hero is Joseph Lister. Joseph Lister was the founder of antiseptic surgery and a pioneer in preventive medicine. He was a surgeon of some note in Edinburgh. Lister noted that in his surgical suite 50 per cent of the people on whom he performed amputations died. They passed on of an illness called sepsis. Sepsis was something that Lister did not understand.
Lister noted that carbolic acid seemed to make a difference in the cleanliness of the wound after he was done. That carbolic acid and Lister's thoughts about microbes, the brand new microscope that was just available and Louis Pasteur's work on pasteurization went together to form the basis of scientific medicine.
In a very short period of time in his life, the mortality from amputations went from 45 to 50 per cent down to 5 per cent. It is very interesting that Lister had his thoughts and ideas denigrated by much of the medical community when he first presented them.
This surgeon who is now looked on as the benchmark of surgical treatment was laughed at. During his lifetime he was able to see matters change and he became the founder of modern antiseptic surgery.
I also would like to say that modern medicine can be criticized. Modern medicine has had an effect on another type of mortality, infant mortality. Statistics show that in 1930 in Canada 89 of 1,000 babies died. In 1991 but six of 1,000 babies died.
The reason I brought this up is that modern medicine undergoes evolution and change. Thought processes alter and move. I have listened today to rather eloquent arguments for how we should ignore medical information. I stand here to say that we do so at our peril.
My good associate for Calgary Northeast believes that immigrants with AIDS should be inadmissible to Canada. I want to talk about the other medical reasons we do not admit immigrants to Canada.
I am going to compare the diseases that we do not allow people in for to HIV. One is venereal disease, which is discovered by a blood test. It is not contagious. It is infectious by sexual contact. It is treatable and is seldom fatal if treated. It is
not visible except in advanced stages. It is cheap to treat with two medicines, amoxicyllin and probenecid. But you do not come into Canada if you have VD.
Another disease is hepatitis. It is found by a blood test. It is infectious by blood to blood contact. That is, the nurse who happens to be pricked in the finger when she has taken blood from a person with hepatitis can get hepatitis. It is not visible unless the person is jaundiced or yellow. It can be fatal in some cases. It is difficult to treat at moderate cost.
Another disease is tuberculosis. It is discovered by a Mantoux test or a scratch on the skin. It is infectious. In the true sense of word it is contagious by cough or sputum. It is treatable, rarely fatal. It is fairly inexpensive to treat as well.
If an immigrant has any one of these diseases he or she is inadmissible. I am sorry, they cannot be admitted to Canada. What other diseases would cause denial of entry into Canada? Parasites, leprosy, and the list goes on.
I would like to quote the parliamentary secretary to the minister from Hansard some time ago. This is an interesting quotation on the same subject. I also want to talk about something the hon. member raised with regard to the fact that people coming into Canada are not tested for HIV and that the minister promised to do something about it four weeks ago. The hon. member should know-I thought he knew, maybe he does not know that the enabling legislation and regulation on medical matters under this department's aegis has remained unchanged for 40 years''. She went on to say:There should not be precipitous moves on an issue like this. Be careful. Go at it slowly. Do not move quickly''.
In my view if this member had not brought this issue forward it probably would have been hidden under another 40 years of deadwood and backwoods thinking.
Where is HIV if we compare it to the other illnesses that do not allow people to enter Canada? How does it stack up in terms of the criteria I mentioned before? It is found by a blood test. It is contagious by blood to blood contact. Notice that I said blood to blood contact. It is not visible except in very advanced cases. It is fatal and has no cure. It is very expensive to treat. Various comments have been made here today about the cost. The best estimates I have are costs that range between $50,000 and $250,000 for an individual who has the disease advanced enough to require direct medical care.
How much does venereal disease cost to treat? About $25 for the test, $50 for the medicine, $100 for a doctor's visit, $25 for a retest, $50 for the clinic and the pharmacy, in total about $250. TB is estimated at $1,105. Not a good comparison there.
Why is HIV different from other diseases? I want to be very frank about this. HIV is different because the medical issue has been pushed aside by the human rights issue. This disease is not being treated strictly as a medical issue, it is being treated as a human rights issue.
When the disease was first discovered medical people called it gay men's disease. Why? Because it was discovered to be primarily a disease of gay men. There was an outcry that would not allow the medical profession to call it what it was. Change the name. As the disease became better known and better understood it was found to be more common in the Haitian community. There was an outcry from the Haitian community. "You cannot discriminate against the Haitian community because it is more common in our citizens. You cannot mention that". But medical practitioners must mention that. How could they hide their heads in the sand and say that it does not exist?
We know that intravenous drug users often end up with HIV. We know that the sad and sorry hemophiliacs who must have blood products given to them often end up with the disease. We know that those poor unfortunates who contact it in surgery and other blood to blood contact also get the disease.
Lister would have looked at this issue and thought that Canadians had gone mad. We understand the source. We understand the mechanism. We understand the diagnosis. We know the cost and we know the risk.
I have treated people for illness all my adult life. Common sense tells me to deny entrance to those who have the other diseases. Common sense tells me to deny entrance to Canada for those who have AIDS.