Madam Speaker, we met with the Nova Scotia group and, at that time, its focus was on the awareness bill. That is where it wanted to put the emphasis. A fair bit of research is going on for sickle cell. Putting more focus on sickle cell specifically would drive more research toward finding a cure. Stem cell research is new on sickle cell. It is exciting and it is possible.
Right now, sickle cell patients need to have blood transfusions to extend their life expectancy. That is just not good enough. People can have a life expectancy of 40 or 50 years with sickle cell and they can extend it with blood transfusions. Imagine having 10 to 20 blood transfusions a month. Stem cell research is the direction researchers are looking toward right now. As I said, $1.8 million were focused directly on sickle cell research, but more can be done.