Thank you, Senator Arlen Specter, for funding us for these past few years on carrying out our goals for abstinence-only education.

There are some who believe that there ought not to be only abstinence education but abstinence should be taught in conjunction with contraception.

If we can persuade young people to avoid premarital sex and unintended pregnancies there will be an enormous step forward.

Well, the agencies do not appear to be moving with much dispatch on it.

How long would it take to have a change in regulation?

Where you have a record of NIH employees owning stock and taking consulting fees and doing research which directly relates to the specific company and not filing financial disclosures, why should those employees, who are paid more than…

I just wanted to see how anxious you were to weigh in on that.

Your Department nor this oversight committee is in a position to make that kind of an intensive investigation.

To deal with them on an individual basis is going to be enormously complicated to investigate each one of these matters and make some determination.

How long would you expect it to take to promulgate new rules and regulations?

Is there no appeal process from what the Office of Government Ethics rules?

Are you taking any action to suspend these arrangements while the investigation goes on?

I am not talking about many cases. I am talking about a blanket suspension of consulting arrangements until there can be an inquiry as to all the pending matters to see if there is an actual conflict of interest.

this subcommittee is prepared to do it if you do not and we are prepared to get into the changes of law if you do not come up with something which is adequate.

As a matter of law, there could not be a blanket suspension.

Suppose this subcommittee did not want you to wait. How long would it take you to draft a regulation?

Well, would you specify what is not under your control so that the subcommittee can make an evaluation of that?

The agency would have the authority to submit a regulation to the Office of Government Ethics and then the Office of Government Ethics has to concur before it can be put into effect.