Veterans Affairs committee  I didn't identify you, but you're self-identifying. I'm sorry. What I said was I wasn't sure if I understood you properly. That's what I said and I just wanted to clarify why we did not do that.

Veterans Affairs committee  Individual clinical records, that's right.

Veterans Affairs committee  You're asking me if we knew about two things. Did we know about the court case? No. You won't find that in the scientific literature. I was aware, however, of something in Italy where a group of judges or maybe one judge had condemned some scientists for not having been able to predict earthquakes.

Veterans Affairs committee  No, we didn't look at that. The other question was did we look at the evidence that the judge had. No. Of course, we didn't know about the case, but what we did look at was the only scientific literature available and that was the Italian studies, and we looked at that very carefully.

Veterans Affairs committee  It was a preventive exercise.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you very much. I was not aware of that.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm not sure what you consider to be obvious when it comes to animals in scientific research. It's not that we did not look at them. There's a vast literature on animal research. I'll just go back to explain. There's animal research. There is also pure in vitro research; in vitro means in the laboratory, on living cells or insects.

Veterans Affairs committee  I've grouped them under four recommendations. I'll leave it to you, Mr. Stoffer, to give me the go-ahead for the recommendations.

Veterans Affairs committee  They're more in the sense of looking forward, the way ahead kinds of recommendations.

Veterans Affairs committee  I am, too.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm sorry, do you mean to be here for a third time?

Veterans Affairs committee  Could you please tell me which studies you are referring to, in general?

Veterans Affairs committee  If I'm in an aircraft, it's “General”.

Veterans Affairs committee  That is very broad. You are talking about several things. You are talking about case studies. The report for all of Dr. McDiarmid's studies did not include case studies. It is the same for the Institute of Medicine studies. Furthermore, the case studies are interesting when it comes to raising rare problems that have come up from the beginning.

Veterans Affairs committee  I will talk about recommendations later, which will answer your question in part. As for the benefit of the doubt, I will respond as Dr. McDiarmid did. It is not up to me to tell you how decisions like that should be made when it comes to veterans.