Dr. Salisbury, before I started working here, I had a real job, as a doctor. Anyhow, I agree. As a doctor, you don't worry about causality. Who cares? Somebody has cancer.
Certainly, what we do here.... This goes far beyond this particular subject of the military. Every day, people get cancer. As you say, 40% of people, or whatever the numbers are, will get cancer.
We know that certain things in the environment may lead to cancer, but as a government, as you regulate industry, as you regulate the military, as you.... If it's government money, we do have to worry about the public purse. The real issue would seem to be how far we go in trying to link an exposure to an actual outcome and to bear the financial obligations that come with that, whether it's us, as a government, or private businesses. However, we, as the government, set the rules, right? This is, and I think increasingly ought to be, an issue for governments: how to attribute risk and how far we go in trying to link an outcome with the causality. This seems like a monumental problem.
If you look specifically at the issue before us, can you tell us whether the military has looked at and examined people who lived in different places at different times? For example, we've heard here about Gagetown. Have they looked at whether people who've served at Gagetown from any particular period of time have a higher risk of, for example, certain kinds of cancers?