Mr. Chair, around Christmas time I received a phone call from a friend of mine, Kent Kirkpatrick. Kent is the chief administrative officer for the city of Ottawa and he has MS. I came to know him before I became an MP and he has done very well as chief administrative officer for the city of Ottawa with fairly serious responsibilities. He is a very intelligent and serious fellow. He was calling to arrange a meeting with Mr. Katz, another MS patient, who wanted to meet with me and perhaps two or three other people. We arranged that meeting early in January.
Mr. Katz introduced me to a doctor who is a Fellow at McMaster. He is an American but he is a Fellow at McMaster. He introduced me to this notion, which I admit was fairly new to me, this chronic cerebral spinal venous insufficiency and the possible treatment of it which is basically angioplasty that Dr. Zamboni had done in Italy. The results of some treatments had been released a couple of months before in November. I must admit to being impressed with that information, but what impressed me most was the feeling of hope expressed by the four or five folks I was meeting with. They were afflicted with MS, but the feeling of hope was so obvious in their voices, their body posture and in their eyes. I resolved to try to find out more about this to see where it was headed because it was new to me.
With some effort from my colleagues, in February we had a round table on neurological diseases that my colleague from Etobicoke North helped organize. I talked to her and my colleague from St. Paul's to get a sense of where this was going. After reading a bit I discovered there was some fairly blatant tensions in the MS Society between the traditional approach taken to treating MS and the people who thought that the treatment applied to CCSVI could be a solution to at the very least alleviate some of the symptoms.
I gather from what I have heard here tonight that it is fairly well accepted, if not fully scientifically yet, branded, but a fairly accepted hypothesis with some growing anecdotal evidence that it does indeed provide alleviation of symptoms and some hope. So much so, that two constituents paid $10,000 each to go to Poland to have it done. They are back and are feeling quite better, so this just feeds on itself. We now have a situation where the tension has grown beyond the MS Society. We have seen it a bit here in the House tonight, but it has also grown in the medical society.
I read today a letter to the editor of Maclean's magazine, June 21 edition. It is from Dr. Bradley Dibble, a cardiologist in Barrie, Ontario. He writes, “The resistance to CCSVI treatment for MS from the neurological community surprises me because they aren't even consistent when it comes to this kind of problem. As a cardiologist I am asked by neurologists on a daily basis to investigate patients with unexplained strokes to see if they have a small hole in their heart called the patent foramen ovale, PFO, and if I find one to have it closed with an invasive procedure. This is despite the fact that there are no clinical trials to show us that this is the right thing to do for these patients. There does appear to be a slightly higher incidence of PFO in unexplained strokes although they are present in about 25% of everyone on the planet and some observational information showing that this reasonably safe and not too costly invasive procedure appears helpful. To me, this sounds a lot like CCSVI, an association that has identified the procedure that can address the abnormality and some early observations that suggest a benefit. My neurology colleagues need to start moving forward and offer this procedure to MS patients and see how they respond”.
I think that pretty well sums up the debate that I am hearing here tonight.
I do not like to participate, and I will not, in any blame game. I am here to try to make things progress, make things better for my fellow citizens, those of Ottawa—Vanier and beyond.
Yes, there is some movement on the research side and I applaud that. It is the way to go. And that is definitely a responsibility of the federal authorities. But it does not stop there. There are also other authorities. One should never underestimate the power to convene. I was on the government side, at one time. I was in the cabinet and the power to convene is a very potent force. I would encourage the Minister of Health to use that power to convene.
There is a convention being called for the summer. That is fine. But there is also the power to convene federal-provincial meetings and those can be quite successful in provoking things to happen. It seems to me that is the stage we are at, so there might be a usefulness to having a federal-provincial meeting on that. I would certainly encourage the minister to consider that. I think it would be highly desirable. It is highly desirable on the part of the 55,000 to 75,000 Canadians who suffer from MS and who would love to be able to see if indeed, through a diagnostic, the CCSVI treatment, the angioplasty, could help alleviate their symptoms. I think we owe them that. We owe them the benefit of exploring whether or not we should be doing that, and quickly.
There seems to be a consensus tonight that there is a parallel track here between the research and the scientific affirmation of what is CCSVI vis-à-vis MS. Is it a cause, or is it a side effect, and can indeed angioplasty really alleviate the symptoms? It seems to be able to. We all know angioplasty is a fairly established procedure in this country. It is done regularly to tens of thousands of patients who have heart surgery. It is not as though we are inventing angioplasty here. It is done. It is a common thing.
So, if indeed, performing angioplasty on a venal insufficiency for people who suffer from MS can alleviate those symptoms, for heaven's sake, let us get there.
I accept the comments that we should be pressuring provincial colleagues as well. I have talked to my provincial counterpart and I will do so again. I will even formalize it in letters if need be because that is where we are at. We have a responsibility to our fellow citizens. We have over 50,000 people who suffer from MS in this country. They have a ray of hope projected for the first time in a long time.
They need to know whether or not, through a diagnostic, they have CCSVI and therefore could be afforded a treatment which is not, by all accounts, something that we would be reinventing here. I appreciate the comments from my colleague from Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound that we should not be reinventing the wheel. Well, angioplasty exists. We do not need to reinvent it. However, we need to apply it if, indeed, it can alleviate the symptoms that MS sufferers are experiencing.
I would hope that the government, through goodwill, and my colleagues from all opposition parties, through goodwill, could come together on this and cause something positive to happen for our fellow Canadians who suffer from this awful disease.