I would say that it in fact is no more complex than looking at the causative effect between smoking and cancers, which has obviously a history, taken by doctors and by smoking and eventually finding out the relationship. It is something that again is what we do with epidemiology. Epidemiology should be looking at some of these relationships.
I just think it is important for us to start ensuring that we keep a watching brief on what is going on with new technologies and monitor where the causative relationship is. We did it with cigarettes; we found it out with a lot of things that we did not know of before; and we now find cause and effect with lots of usage or lack of usage of certain foods, etc. This is a normal part of finding a way, to collect good data based on clinical medicine and outcomes and disease. That's what epidemiology is, disease clusters. Why are they there? How are they there? What are the causative effects?
If an epidemiological basis exists for looking at these new technologies, which are being used so frequently now, it is really important for us to keep a tab on them. I know that everyone thinks the precautionary principle is a joke, but it isn't. If we had observed the precautionary principle a long time ago, we could have prevented many of the diseases we now have that are very rampant.
I'm not saying that the precautionary principle should stop progress or stop the use of technology, but there needs to be some kind of data, some kind of watching brief done by the federal government on the way the country and various regions...and one may find a causative relationship between why things happen in region A and don't happen in region B that have the same frequency or duration.
I think this is an important part of new epidemiology. It's no longer that we're looking at cause and effect of the disease, of viruses, of bacteria; we now have to look at new kinds of things, such as technology and what its impact—