Tom Harkin

But you can assure that this 10 percent cut is no longer valid because of the----

I was amazed to discover in my State of Iowa a few years ago that there are a lot of nurses in my State.

We ought to look--we ought to just see if there's some suggestions out there.

I just wonder if there's an untapped pool out there of nurses who may be in their late 30s, early 40s that would get back in if they had the wherewithal to do so.

Well, I want to pick up a little bit of what Senator Stevens just said this end of life care. I just wrote it down here. It's got to be more rational, caring and cost effective.

What would you think about that? I've never talked to Senator Stevens about this but this idea of having advance directives? People don't. They just don't think about it. Maybe when people get on Medicare that ought to be a part of when…

Three hundred percent increase in the number of pediatric food allergy cases over the past 10 years. That's alarming.

But--again, with the 300 percent increase do we have enough resources going into that? It's our resources again.

Do you think we're putting enough resources into that on the balance of things? This is very promising.

It would be a big deal.

I recently met with some people who were developing a DNA based vaccine that identifies proteins.

We don't know how many are in each State. We just know there's something going on there, right?

But in the case of a pandemic even after spending this money, it will take us months to develop a vaccine.

Interesting. I have to find out more about that.

I don't want to destroy that, I don't want to have them say, well, maybe yes, maybe no.

We're both very dismayed by this, and we're going to try to everything we can to get a better allocation this year for NIH.

Thank you again for your leadership, all that you're doing at NIH.

Anything else, Dr. Collins, about gene therapy--what was that dog's name?

This is part of translating what you're doing into actual?

But again, should we be putting more energy and effort and money into that, or into building facilities that, when the strain comes out we can put people to work right away developing the vaccine on an RNA basis?

My gosh, if you could develop a universal vaccine, that would be the answer to everything.

Universal flu vaccine. Is that being pursued right now? Is that----

I, again, I remain skeptical. I just find that, it seems to me that we just need to change some diets and habits.

It actually stopped the degeneration?

Some people have different rates of metabolism. People have to exercise and eat less than other people in order not to become obese.