INDU Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON INDUSTRY

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE L'INDUSTRIE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, May 10, 2000

• 1544

[English]

The Chair (Ms. Susan Whelan (Essex, Lib.)): I'm going to call the meeting to order pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), a study on space, science and technology: contribution to quality of life.

I'm very pleased to welcome here, on behalf of the committee, our Minister of Industry, the Honourable John Manley, and our special guest today, the Honourable John Glenn, the United States senator and astronaut. Accompanying Mr. Glenn is his wife, Mrs. Annie Glenn.

We also have with us Ambassador Giffin, our United States ambassador. As well, we have at the table Mr. Mac Evans, president of the Canadian Space Agency, and Mr. Dave Williams, the Canadian astronaut and director of space and life sciences, NASA.

Without further ado, Minister, we'll turn it over to you.

• 1545

Hon. John Manley (Minister of Industry): I don't think you want to hear very much from me. I will simply say that I'm very pleased to be able to present Senator Glenn to the committee today, not just because he's someone who I think has probably inspired all of us, at one point or another in our lives, with the excitement of his first mission, but also because part of his second mission to space was to perform very important experiments that, in part, were designed in Canada and represent some important medical research that is ongoing in Canada with respect to osteoporosis.

We're also very proud of the fact that one of our Canadian astronauts, Dave Williams, who is accompanying Senator Glenn today, has taken on a role at NASA.

I guess you're the first person to actually fill that role, Mr. Williams.

It's a distinction for us that it's being filled by a Canadian. He will bring his own medical background to bear in some of the discussion that will ensue, I think, based on the experiences of the flight.

With no further ado, I think Senator Glenn has a presentation to make. Then we have time for questions until about 4.30, when, as you know, Madam Chair, we've invited parliamentarians into the Speaker's chambers for a chance to have a chat with the senator—and maybe for the odd one who wants to have a photograph taken or perhaps pursue an autograph.

Who knows, Senator?

We're very pleased to have you here, and I know the members of the committee are looking forward to your presentation and the opportunity to ask you some questions.

Mr. John Glenn (Individual Presentation): Thank you. I appreciate it very much.

I'm honoured to be here today with Dave, who does such a great job for you down there at Houston as head of life sciences, which oversees all of the medical aspects and the research that's going on in all the space flights. That's a very responsible position, so I'm glad we can be here together today. If you have detailed questions that get beyond my medical knowledge, why, Dave's always available here to set the record straight on what the true situation is.

Let me just say a few things about the last flight I was on. There are some rumours about that flight that are not true. The first one is that NASA would not let me make a space walk because they were afraid that at my age I might wander off someplace, and the other was that I was the first 77-year-old male ever to leave Florida in something other than a Winnebago camper.

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. John Glenn: But we did have a lot of experiments on that flight, and the reason we have the program, of course, is to do basic research. It's not just to let Dave or me or the other astronauts go up and experience something up there in space, much as we love to do that. You like to go up and just ride and look out—it's just great—but the reason you're up there is to do basic medical research.

The reason I was there was that about six or seven years ago, we were preparing for a NASA debate on the floor of the Senate, on appropriations, and in preparing for that, I noted that in some of the material NASA had pinpointed some 52 different body changes that occur in astronauts going around the earth over a period of time, after you get by a period of several days.

Now, they recover from that when they come back to earth, unless it is a very long flight. After very long flights, there's some question yet, I think, as to whether they get complete recovery—in bone restructuring and things like that. But on the space shuttle, of course, we've been limited to about two weeks in space as the longest flight, except for.... I think the longest flight we've had, which was the one Dave was on prior to mine, the neurolab flight, was, what, 16 days...?

Dr. Dave Williams (Director, Space and Life Sciences, NASA): Yes.

Mr. John Glenn: You had a 16-day flight, so that's the longest.

Normally you look at a shuttle flight as being about a two-week flight, about 14 days.

For the flight I was on, the reason I was on the flight was that for some of these 52 changes that occur, I noted that there were about 8 or 10 of those changes that are similar to what occurs as a natural part of the aging process right here on earth. Now, when you age, you can't go back and “un-age” yourself. You can't not have cardiovascular changes, immune system changes, and several things like that.

So the idea, when I presented it to NASA, was that I thought maybe we could look at some of these things with someone who'd had some of these changes already occur, who could go up and see what the response was compared to the younger people, with the idea of getting a handle on osteoporosis, for instance, or on the body's immune system changes, or on the protein turnover in the muscles that change when you're in the microgravity of space. These change for the elderly right here on earth. Balance, coordination, and things like that are very different for a person of my age who is going up there.

• 1550

Well, this had to run the gamut of peer review and so on. It took about a year's time for the NASA administrator, Dan Goldin, to decide that, yes, it would be scientifically valuable—as the National Institute of Aging thought it would be and as the NASA doctors thought it would be—to compare my reaction to these things to the younger astronauts' reaction, the objective being to determine, if we could, what turns the body on and off.

For instance, what turns the body's immune system on and off? If we could answer that one, maybe we would ultimately have a lead on cancer—or on all sorts of disease prevention. Who knows? And not only the immune system, but protein turnover in the muscles and so on, which plagues people here on earth.... If we can learn what turns the body's system on and off, then we make it possible for astronauts to go on much longer space flights, which makes their lives in the space program more productive, but also, maybe we can someday learn how to turn these things on and off and thereby take away many of the frailties of old age right here on earth.

So that's what I was all about; that's what I was doing. That's what Dave and his people put together the research projects for, then: they would try to measure some of these things. It's just a toe in the door at this point. We've just started this.

Obviously you're involved with science and so on, so you know that a data point of one doesn't mean a whole lot, and right now, in my age bracket, we have a data point of one. It's a good start and a toe in the door, but we hope now that we'll be able to get more people in this age bracket, so that maybe five or six years from now we'll have eight or ten people. That's a database, then, that you can work with and start drawing some conclusions from as to things we can do to help older folks right here on earth.

As well, it can help the younger astronauts to go on longer-term space flights, which becomes more meaningful now that we're getting into the international space station. The station will be occupied later this year, in late October, I think.

Dr. Dave Williams: Yes.

Mr. John Glenn: That's when the station will be occupied, with people up there for lengthy periods of time, for two to three months at a time. They're going to have some of these effects, and if we can help make it possible for them to be out there longer, that's fine.

I do have a movie here. It's a 20-minute movie that we put together after the flight. These are pictures taken on board the flight. One of our crew members, Steve Robinson, who you'll see in the pictures here, took primary responsibility for editing this. I will narrate this as we go along to show you what's going on. It might give you a little bit of a feel for what it's like up there.

You'll see plenty of use of the Canadian-designed robotic arm up there, because we had the Spartan spacecraft, about 1,800 pounds, that had to be taken out of the bay, taken out and cut loose, and it would come back two days later, when we'd rendezvous with it again, pick it up, and put it back in the bay.

That arm you've put on the craft is a wondrous arm. You can take that thing and control.... It's amazing, the amount of control. It's down to, I don't know, a tenth to a twentieth of an inch or something like that, I think.

Dr. Dave Williams: When you're docking—

Mr. John Glenn: When you're docking, you have it right down to within a tenth or a twentieth of an inch. It is amazing control for a 50-foot-long arm. It's great.

You'll also see the osteo experiment. That was Canadian designed. I was prime and control. We had 83 projects on this one flight. With that many projects, we had them assigned to different people. Because I was going to be doing some osteo experiments anyway, they assigned that project to me, so there'll be a picture in here of me tweaking some of the dials on that, which I had to do at least once every day and sometimes twice. One day I did it three times, as we changed that setting under the guidance of your Canadian scientists right here on earth.

If we can start the movie, I can narrate it, and Dave will jump in here, I hope, if I say something wrong.

• 1555

Dr. Dave Williams: While we're rewinding it, let me just leap in and say that in regard to the results of STS-95, people were looking forward to them in order to find out what we would really learn from having been in space and from having Senator Glenn fly in space as the oldest astronaut. Often, before we flew, people would say, well, what is this science going to show you with a sample of one?

There's no question that the results of STS-95 have really challenged how we think of the aging process. Traditionally, prior to flying Senator Glenn on STS-95, I think most of us would have assumed that as we get older we tend to become frail, that we're not able to do the types of things we used to be able to do when we were younger. The results of STS-95 really show that he was able to recover at the same rate as 40-year-old astronauts. We'll talk about that after we finish the video.

[Video presentation]

• 1618

Mr. John Glenn: That gives you just a slight taste of what it's like to be on board this one flight.

You saw all the rig I had on, with the head net and the respiration and all of that. There were 21 different body measurements being measured on that flight. Dave's flight, the one before, had....

How many people did you have, Dave?

Dr. Dave Williams: We had seven people on the flight.

Mr. John Glenn: You had seven people on your flight all instrumented like that. They were all younger than I, of course, so what we could do is compare my reactions on this flight that you just saw to the reactions of Dave and his people back then. I think I'll let him address that for whatever time we have left here, and then we can answer any questions you may have of either one of us.

Dave, you might want to comment on what the results were and what the future is.

The Chair: Perhaps you could do that ever so briefly. We have a number of people who want to ask questions, and we're running out of time.

Dr. Dave Williams: Sure.

Mr. John Glenn: All right.

Dr. Dave Williams: We'll do it really quickly.

One of the striking findings was the fact that Senator Glenn recovered at the rate of astronauts half his age. That's of fundamental importance for us when we understand how elderly patients recover after surgery. As you know, osteoporosis affects 1.4 million Canadians. If they fall and break a hip, 20% of those people can die in the year after surgery. So if we can understand how Senator Glenn readapted so quickly after flight, equivalent to a 40-year-old, and apply that knowledge to the elderly, I think it will really help.

The other thing that's really exciting is that when we establish ourselves in low earth orbit and ultimately leave low earth orbit, we will do that by virtue of technology. Within Canada, we have tremendous expertise in biomedical technology, which you saw in the osteo experiment that helps us understand osteoporosis and aging. We also have a tremendous capability in nanotechnology and information technology. Right now we are working on establishing the missions beyond low earth orbit, currently destination unknown, but the option of going to Mars is certainly one that's being considered.

These future missions going beyond low earth orbit to Mars will be international missions. I'm very proud to say that I think Canada could play a key role in missions like that.

I think technology is what's going to enable human space exploration in the next millennium.

• 1620

The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Williams.

Just so everyone knows, I'm going to ask everyone to be extremely brief and try to limit themselves to one question, because we have a number of people on the list.

Mr. Penson, please.

Mr. Charlie Penson (Peace River, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Madam Chair. It's certainly a pleasure to be in the company of Mr. Glenn today.

Many of us have followed your amazing career, both in international space and in the Senate of the United States, with a lot of interest. We're looking forward to the benefits that will derive from the experiments you conducted in this last space mission.

I have a lot of questions, but I'm going to keep it to one. I noticed you pulling into the bunk to have your sleep: is it any different from sleep on earth? In space, do you experience any difficulties at all in the sleep cycle?

Mr. John Glenn: It's different, but you get accustomed to it very rapidly. With all that rig that we had on and that Dave had on in the previous flight, I think he probably found the same thing I did: it was more trouble sleeping on earth with that on than it was in space. If you have on that head net with all the buttons and you roll over on your pillow at night, those pressure points tend to wake you up. Up there, you're just floating; you don't have any pressure points like that. In some respects, it was easier up there than it was on earth when you had on all that rig.

Now, naturally you're in a strange environment, with different sensations. For a few days up there you tend to be awake a little more. I thought I was sleeping as well up there as I did on earth, but the instrumentation showed that I was awake a lot more than I was on earth. I had more awake periods and then I'd go back to sleep again, but I felt fine.

Dave and his people, the sleep people, Dr. Czeisler and all of them, feel that you maybe don't need quite as much sleep up there as you do on earth. On earth, I like eight or eight and a half hours. Up there, I seemed to get six and a half hours and I felt fine. I don't know whether that's because you're not using your muscles as much and are just floating around. If I wanted to come to see you over there and stood up right now, I'd have to lug 185 or 190 pounds around to come to see you, and then lug it back here again. Up there in space, I'd just pull a little—a few ounces of pressure—and float over and see you, and push off a little bit and come back.

For a comparable amount of work up there, I think you're getting by without as much physical or caloric burning up as you do here on earth. I don't know that you need as much.

So I don't know, but maybe it is a general finding that you don't need as much sleep. I think it has been. It was on our flight, anyway.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Penson.

Before I go to Mr. McTeague, the next questioner, I just wanted to let you know, Senator Glenn, that Senator Grafstein, who is the co-chair of the Canada-U.S. Interparliamentary Group, has also joined the committee to hear what you have to say today.

Mr. John Glenn: Good.

The Chair: Dan McTeague, please.

Mr. Dan McTeague (Pickering—Ajax—Uxbridge, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Glenn, it's a pleasure to have you here today.

I've never understood the balance, but I guess you're testimony to the fact that politics may very well lead to a much stronger regime down the road. I commend you for that. I was impressed that on October 29, 1962, you did your first flight. I was 13—13 days old, that is to say—when you did that, and I was a member of Parliament, as I am now, when you did your second flight. I'm sure that when it comes to the mission to Jupiter I'll be watching, probably from my wheelchair, as you do it again. Well done.

I have a very simple question, in order to allow other members an equal opportunity. Canada's space-science research has been at the forefront of a lot of initiatives undertaken by NASA of late. How valuable do you think Canada's contribution is in this area? Do you believe we should devote far more resources to it than we are currently?

Mr. John Glenn: Well, I do. I know I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but I think we should be putting more into this.

To be philosophical for a moment, every bit of human progress that has ever been made was made because somebody was curious about how you get out there or how you do new things, or curious about how you can design a better glass or mike or whatever—for example, will that mike here turn on and off, or can we get a better switch? There are a million questions like that and a curiosity about how we do things in a new way, differently and better. That applies to medicine, to our own health, to housing, to the standard of living—to everything.

People have looked up for tens of thousands of years and wondered what was up there, and now we have a chance to go up and use this as a laboratory. To not avail ourselves of it, I think, is crazy.

There are so many areas where we can work together. Canada has played a vital role in this. Look at the arm and what we're doing with it. You people designed that. Look at the medical experiments. The best thing you did was to send Dave Williams down there on a life sciences course.

All of these things fit together in a pattern that we'll all work on together in the future, which I think is going to be just as key towards future progress on earth as it has been in the past.

Mr. Dan McTeague: I look forward to seeing it.

Mr. John Glenn: Canada's participation in this is vital, right along with our own.

• 1625

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. McTeague.

I'm going to be moving to Mr. Dubé.

Do you have questions, Mr. Dubé?

[Translation]

Mr. Antoine Dubé (Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, BQ): I am the member for Lévis in Quebec. Since I don't speak English well, I'll ask you my questions in French. In Canada we have two official languages. It's not quite the same thing as in the committees in the United States.

There was a considerable interval between your two experiences, more than 25 years between 1962 and 1998. Did your first experience have any medical aspects that enabled you to make comparisons? Your first experience was a more general one, but did you perform certain acts that were the same as in your second experience?

[English]

Mr. John Glenn: Yes, it's a very good question, one I get fairly often, because the flights were so far apart. The first time up, we didn't have any track record. We didn't have a basis of knowledge back then, so we didn't really know what to expect.

Before my first flight, some of the doctors, some of the ophthalmologists, were very seriously predicting that our eyes might change shape in orbit and we would not be able to see properly. We even had plans made so that if my eyesight was going bad so rapidly that I wouldn't be able to see the instrument panel, we were going to come down in a contingency area someplace around the earth and make an early re-entry. That didn't happen, of course.

Another prediction was about the fluid in the inner ear. When you're in space and don't have the effect of gravity, the fluid is freer to move more randomly, so the prediction was that you might get vertigo and nausea so badly that you wouldn't be able to function and would have to make a re-entry.

Those were the kinds of questions we were trying to answer back then. I could go on with some others, but in other words, we really didn't know quite what the effect on the human body was going to be. Of course, that was limited to a three-orbit flight, just about five hours. I didn't have any problems with the balance or with the eyes and also no other problems.

Now here we are, some 120 manned flights later, and we have a basis of knowledge now. Now we're using space for research. We no longer worry about going up and having our eyes change shape or getting vertigo so badly we won't be able to function. We now are able to use space for these 83 different research projects that benefit people right here on earth. The whole mission has changed.

Also, just the physical aspects of getting into space have changed. Back then, on the Old Mercury launch pad, at insertion into orbit we got up to eight Gs—eight times gravity. Now, it's a vector in that direction; it's not like how we're sitting up now. Your G vector is this way: at insertion into orbit it's like you're lying in bed and the whole bed is being accelerated upwards, at eight times gravity.

On this last flight on STS-95, we didn't get above three. We hit about three Gs at insertion into orbit. You need have to have a spacecraft designed like that to let the scientific equipment do its job. You can't design all scientific equipment to be heavy duty, to be built like bridge girders. You want to keep the Gs down, so it was a maximum of three Gs—and only two Gs on re-entry.

That means we have a longer period of launch. Back on the Mercury launch pad, we were into orbit just over five minutes from launch. On this, it's about 8 minutes and 26 seconds, I think, from launch into orbit, at 17,500 miles an hour.

So there are differences between the flights, but the major difference is that we've gone from trying to find out if we can do this to using space for basic research now. The whole mission has changed completely.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. John Glenn: That was a long answer to your question.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Dubé.

Madam Jennings, please.

• 1630

[Translation]

Ms. Marlene Jennings (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Glenn.

Research on human aging is something that affects us, particularly in western countries where the aging of the population is a fact. You mentioned that at one point we would have a fairly large sample in order to be able to draw some more general conclusions. At the present time, there's only one elderly person who has had this experience.

We know that the aging process may take differently in men and in women and even in various ethno-cultural groups. They may be affected by different diseases, etc. Can you predict when we will have a large enough sample of a diverse elderly population with this experience in space, so that we can extend our conclusions to the population at large?

[English]

Mr. John Glenn: I think I'll let Dave answer.

Dave, do you want to answer that one? You're in the planning area of this thing more than I am.

Dr. Dave Williams: Sure.

[Translation]

It's a very important question. During the STS-95 mission, the experiments we conducted were aimed at determining whether the physiological change that takes place in an older person is virtually the same as that which occurs in the entire elderly population. It is very important for us to be able to continue experiments such as OSTEO with new technologies because we can make use of these technologies with patients in hospitals to deal with problems, to make other discoveries, to determine how drugs work, to deal with osteoporosis and for all sorts of other purposes.

At the present time we have one senior with this experience in space. In the future we can engage in other experiments with other older astronauts. In my opinion,

[English]

it's just the tip of the iceberg that we're beginning to look at here.

[Translation]

The Chair: Thank you Ms. Jennings.

[English]

Mr. John Glenn: I might add something too.

The Chair: Sure, Senator Glenn.

Mr. John Glenn: I don't think you said this, Dave. It was not in the translation. NASA has asked the doctors to propose follow-on experiments to my being up there, to get other people up—men and women both. That is in the process of being done now, and we hope the medical community makes a lot of good proposals.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Riis.

Mr. Nelson Riis (Kamloops, Thompson and Highland Valleys, NDP): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome, Senator Glenn. I must say that you've been an inspiration for so many, particularly for those of us that are getting on in years a little bit. You give us a great deal to hope for.

I want to say that your presentation in terms of using space as a basic laboratory and the fact that you bring an historic perspective to this program from your experience in space.... Could you perhaps extrapolate a few years ahead for us and identify the kind of experimentation, the kind of research, that we could be considering in space and that would have applicability here on earth?

Mr. John Glenn: Well, it's difficult to do. If anybody had asked me 30 or 40 years ago what we'd be doing in space right now, I wouldn't have even been close. It's difficult to extrapolate into the future.

I think a lot of our research will be in the medical area. I think it will centre a lot in that area because we're all concerned about health and longer life.

At the beginning of the last century, in 1900, the life expectancy in the United States was about 47 years, I know, and I think it was probably about the same in Canada. Now, because of medical technology, it's up to about 78 years. We've gone for tens of thousands of years with life expectancy going up just a little, and all at once, in the last 100 years, it has just gone up like that.

Now, where do we fit on the end of that and how much can we improve that? How much can we make life better at older ages by our experiments? How can we make old age worth having instead of it being sitting around in a wheelchair someplace? I think those areas of medical research will be a major area.

Dave directs the bio-reactor studies, the cancer studies. We may be able to come up with some answers in those areas that will help in disease prevention or disease cures, in addition to some of these things like the “just old age” problems that I'm talking about.

• 1635

In regard to materials, we just showed very briefly that experiment where I was turning on the switches for aerogel. That experimentation can be done better up there than it can on earth here. Aerogel is the lightest material ever put together. You can have a whole batch of it put on your hand and it's so light you can't even feel it.

It's the best insulating material we've ever known, except that it's not too stable yet. They're trying to get it stabilized better. They hope that eventually they can do things like coat a window with it. The scientist working on this has told us it would be equal to 32 thermopanes put together. That's pretty good insulation. If you can put a coating on something and come up with something like that, it revolutionizes engines, refrigerators, fuel use, and just a whole host of things. So I think there'll be areas like that in materials work that we'll be doing.

There'll be pharmaceutical work in space, where you can do some things up there. Protein crystal growth, for instance, you can do here on earth; you get crystals of a certain size, which are useful in medical experimentation and pharmaceutical development. The crystals here on earth are of a certain size and purity. In space, they're much larger and more pure, so you can do better things with them. We have to stabilize them so that they can be better used here on earth. I'm getting out of my field again here. This is Dave's field.

But those are the kinds of things I think we can do, these pharmaceutical, medical, and materials things.

I'm sure that one of these days our project will also take us somewhere in the future; I'm sure we'll go to Mars someday. I'm not quite as optimistic as some people about how soon that may be, because we have a lot of human things yet to discover out there. With current technology, it's about eight and a half months to Mars and eight and a half months back, plus the three or four months you'd want to spend out there. We don't yet have the experience for being in space that long at one crack, so we need a lot of work in that particular area.

Maybe we'll get some of that on the international space station, where people can go up and stay up for an unlimited period of time if we want to leave them up there. We can build up the time in space in getting ready for Mars and see what some of the problems are.

These things are all areas that I think we'll be looking into in the future.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Riis.

Mr. Cannis.

Mr. John Cannis (Scarborough Centre, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Senator Glenn, I'd like to welcome you to our committee.

Some of the areas I just want to briefly touch upon, because you referred often to trying to create a better environment for seniors. I think we all agree as our aging population is growing.

One of the areas we have to face is, number one, how to look after our seniors. Our medical costs are growing, as we see, continuously. One of the debates we're having here in our country—and I know it unfolds in your country on an ongoing basis—is about the cost of providing medical services, hospitals, and equipment, etc., as was mentioned.

We're always trying to find means and ways of keeping the best cost delivery possible. Can you tell us, through your experiments, of course, how far we've gone?

More so, can you tell us how you have—if you have—successfully sold this to your people in the United States? Because we, as a government, have to justify, on an ongoing basis to our taxpayers, the appropriation, the cost factor, etc., which.... I'll be very blunt. The average individual out there only sees the dollars and cents spent on or appropriated to a specific program, in this case, space research, etc., but they do not see today the immediate gain or the gains we will have in the future.

Can you elaborate on that so that we, through you, can take the message to our people out there that this investment, as I prefer to refer to it, is a worthwhile investment?

Mr. John Glenn: There's not an easy answer to that one either. What you're talking about is what you spend the money on here and whether this kind of research is worthwhile or not; I think that was the basic nub of it.

In good times or bad, I think any business or any government is well advised to put some money into basic research. If we in the United States had waited until we had all of our problems solved before people moved off the east coast and headed west, they'd still all be sitting there east of the Appalachians.

You always put some money into research. The experience has been that the money spent on basic research normally pays off in the future far beyond anything that you see at the outset—that's just the way this happened.

The problem with research is that you can't guarantee what the result will be. It's research: we don't know the answer. You hit the most promising areas and try to go for them. The experience has been that this has led us into terrific improvements in our society, our style of communication, our transportation—across the board.

Dave, do you want to address that?

• 1640

Dr. Dave Williams: Let me just very quickly give you a few direct applications of the space program that exist today.

Through the space program, we've developed an implantable ventricular assist device, a heart pump that can be used to prevent cardiac transplants, which is available and is currently being implanted.

On Senator Glenn's mission, they flew what I call a “hospital sleep laboratory in a box”. It's a little box that prevents you having to admit patients to the hospital and allows you to do formal sleep studies at home.

We talked about the oyster-toad fish. We used an implantable electrode that can now be used as a nerve prosthetic bridge, so if you are in a car accident and you lose part of your nerve, we can sew in a segment of this prosthetic nerve and your own nerve will regrow.

We also have the ability to micro-encapsulate the drugs used to treat cancer that have toxic side effects. If you inject them systemically, as we all know, patients' hair falls out; they have horrendous problems with these drugs. You can encapsulate them in small compounds, inject them locally into tumours in the body, and then activate them with either heat or other radio-frequency waves. There are unbelievable applications.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Cannis.

On behalf of the committee, which has taken a very special interest in this subject—we visited President Evans at the Canadian Space Agency—I want to thank you, Senator Glenn, and you, Dr. Williams, for being with us this afternoon.

I have to keep you to a time schedule. The minister is giving me a signal that your reception has started without you—

Voices: Oh, oh!

The Chair: —and we want to ensure that you get there. On behalf of the committee, we want to thank you for joining us.

Mr. John Glenn: I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Some hon. members: Hear, hear!

The Chair: The meeting is adjourned.