Mr. Speaker, I have a petition here signed by hundreds of people in the Peterborough area who suffer from end stage renal disease and by their families and friends.
They note that those on kidney dialysis and those who have successfully received transplants are grateful for those treatments, but they point out that the bioartificial kidney, into which research is going on at the present time, offers hope for much greater mobility for those people.
They call upon parliament to work on and support bioartificial kidney research, which would eventually eliminate the need for dialysis or transplantation for those suffering from kidney disease.
I have another petition that also involves kidney disease. The petitioners point out that this is a huge and growing problem in Canada. They call upon parliament to encourage the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to explicitly include kidney research as one of the institutes in its system, to be named the institute of kidney and urinary tract diseases.