FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION

TRANSMISSIBLE SPONGIFORM 
ENCEPHALOPHATHIES
ADVISORY COMMITTEE
October 25, 2001

Holiday Inn
8777 Georgia Avenue
Silver Spring, Maryland

Reported and Transcribed by:
CASET Associates, Ltd.
10201 Lee Highway
Fairfax, Virginia 22030
(703) 352-0091
PARTICIPANTS
Freas, William, PhD, Exec. Sec.
Bolton, David C. PhD, Chairman
Members
Belay, Ermias D. MD
Cliver, Dean O., PhD
DeArmond, Stephen J., MD, PhD
Ewenstein, Bruce M. MD, PhD
Ferguson, Lisa A., DVM
Gambetti, Pierluigi, MD
Lurie, Peter G. MD
McCullough, J. Jeffrey, MD
Piccardo, Pedro, MD
Priola, Suzette A, PhD
Williams, Elizabeth S. DVM, PhD
Walker, Shirley Jean, Consumer Rep.
Petteway, Stephen R., Jr., PhD
Consultants
William C. Blackwelder
Paul Brown, MD
Lester M. Crawford, Jr., DVM, PhD
Susan F. Leitman, MD
George Nemo, PhD
Raymond P. Roos, MD
David Stroncek, MD

CONTENTS

                                                        PAGE

Administrative Remarks - William Freas, MD. Exec. Sec.    1

Opening Remarks - David Bolton, PhD, Committee Chairman   6

TOPIC 1. FDA's Draft Guidance on Revised Preventive Measures to Reduce the Possible Risk of Transmission of 
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) and Variant Creutzfeldt-
Jakob Disease (vCJD) by Blood and Blood Products
(published in the Federal Register on August 29, 2001, 
http://www.fda.gov/cber/gdins/cjdvcjd.htm)

Topic Overview - Dr. Dorothy Scott, MD, OBRR, FDA         7 
Update:  Current State of the Blood Monitoring Project
and Plans to Extend Monitoring to the Supply of Plasma
Derivatives and their Recombinant Analogs
Stephen D. Nightingale, MD, Exec. Sec., DHHS Advisory
Committee on Blood Safety and Availability               26 
Update: Dhhs Meeting held on September 24, 2001
Stephen D. Nightingale, MD                               50

Update:  Anticipated Implementation of New Donor
Deferral Policies
Celso Bianco, MD, Exec. VP, America's Blood Centers      55

Ms. Jacquelyn Fredrick, Senior VP, Biomedical Services
and COO Donor Enterprise Unit, American Red Cross        62

Robert Jones, MD, President, New York Blood Center       68

G. Michael Fitzpatrick, PhD, Col. MS, USA, Director
Armed Services Blood Program Office                      73

Open Public Hearing                                      81

Committee Discussion                                     87

TOPIC 2:  Discussion of Amino Acid Sourcing and
Production and the Theoretical Risk of Transmission
of the BSE Agent Through Their Use in Biopharmaceutical
Products

Topic Introduction and Overview
Dr. Gerald Feldman, OTRR, CBER                          105
Degussa-Rexim's Amino Acid Production Process
Mr. Gerard Richet
R&D Director, Deputy Plan Manger
Degussa-Rexim, France                                   124

Ajinomoto's Amino Acid Production Process
Mr. Mike McLean, Quality Assurance Director, NC Plant   137

Open Session - Open Public Hearing                      144

Committee Discussion and Votes                          151

                      P R O C E E D I N G S        8:05 AM
	DR. FREAS:  Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, invited guests, public participants, I  would like to welcome you to this, our tenth meeting of the Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies Advisory Committee.
	I am Bill Freas, the Executive Secretary for this Committee. Both days of this meeting will be open to the public with the exception of one short closed committee session around lunchtime today.
	As stated in the Federal Register this session will be closed to the public in order for the manufacturers to present trade secret and confidential information to the Committee.
	After this short closed presentation the rest of the meeting today and all of tomorrow will be open to the public.
	At this time I would like to go around and introduce the members seated at the head table.  Will the members please raise their hands as the name is called?
	Starting on the right-hand side of the room, that is the audience's right, the first chair is occupied by Dr. Raymond Roos, Chairman, Department of Neurology, University of Chicago.
	Next is a standing Committee member, Dr. Bruce Ewenstein, Director, Boston Hemophilia Center, Brigham and Women's Hospital.
	Next is a standing Committee member, Dr. Pedro Piccardo, associate professor, Indiana  University School of Medicine.
	Next is a temporary voting member, Dr. Lester Crawford, Executive Director, Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges, Washington, D.C.
	Next is a standing Committee member, Dr. Ermias Belay, medical epidemiologist, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
	Next is a standing Committee member, Dr. Elizabeth Williams, professor, Department of Veterinary Service, University of Wyoming.
	Next is a temporary voting member, Dr. George Nemo, Chief, Blood Resources Section, Division of Blood Diseases and Resources, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.	
	At the front of the table is a standing Committee member, Dr. Pierluigi Gambetti, Professor and Director, Division of Neuropathy, Case Western Reserve.
	Next is an chair where we will soon be joined by Dr. William Blackwelder, biostatistical consultant, Biologics Consulting Group, Alexandria, Virginia.  
	Next is a temporary voting member and also a representative from FDA's Blood Product Advisory Committee, Dr. David Stroncek, Chief, Laboratory Service Section, Department of Transfusion Medicine, NIH.
	Next is the Chairman of this Committee, Dr. David Bolton, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Structure and Function, New York State Institute for Basic Research.
	At the corner of the table is a standing Committee member, Dr. Peter Lurie, a medical researcher for Public Citizen's Health Research Group, Washington, D.C.
	Around the corner is a standing Committee member, Dr. Stephen DeArmond, professor, Department of Pathology, University of California, San Francisco.
	In the empty seat we will soon be joined by Shirley Walker, our consumer representative for today, Vice President of the Health and Human Services, Dallas Urban League.
	The next occupied seat is a standing Committee member, Dr. Suzette Priola, investigator, Laboratory of Persistent and Viral Diseases, Rocky Mountain Laboratories, and the next empty seat we should be joined later today by Dr. Paul Brown, Medical Director, Laboratory of Central Nervous System Studies, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes.
	Next is a standing Committee member, Dr. Jeffrey McCullough, professor, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Minnesota.
	Next is a temporary voting member for today, Dr. Susan Leitman, Chief, Blood Services Section, Department of Transfusion Medicine, NIH.
	Next is a standing Committee member, Dr. Dean Cliver, professor, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California at Davis.
	Next is a standing Committee member, Dr. Lisa Ferguson, Senior Staff Veterinarian, US Department of Agriculture.
	Next is our industry representative, Dr. Stephen Petteway, Director of Pathogen Safety and Research, Bayer Corporation.
	There were two Committee members who could not be with us today. They are Dr. Donald Burke and Dr. John Bailar.
	I would like to thank everybody else for coming, and I would now like to read the conflict of interest statement into the public record.
	The following announcement is made part of the public record to preclude even the appearance of a conflict of interest at this meeting. 
	Pursuant to the authority granted under the Committee charter, the Director, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research has appointed, Drs. Paul Brown, William Blackwelder, Lester Crawford, Susan Leitman, George Nemo, Raymond Roos and David Stroncek as temporary voting members for this meeting.
	Based on the agenda made available it has been determined that the agenda addresses general matters only.
	General matters waivers have been approved by the agency for all members of the TSE Advisory Committee as well as consultants to this meeting.
	The general nature of the matters to be discussed by the Committee will not have a unique and distinct effect on any of the matters, personal or imputed, financial interests.
	Dr. Stephen Petteway is serving as a non-voting industry representative for this Committee. He is employed by Bayer and thus he has interests as employers and other regulated firms.
	In addition, listed on the agenda are speakers making industry presentations. These speakers are employed by industry and thus have interests in their employers and other regulated firms.
	The speakers for topic 1 were invited to present their comments on the implementation of new donor deferral policies and the speakers for topic 2 were invited to talk about their company's manufacturing or production processes.
	All Committee discussions are general matters discussions only.
	In the event that discussions involve specific products or specific firms in which the FDA participants have a financial interest the participants are aware of the need to exclude themselves from these discussions, and their exclusion will be noted in the public record.
	A copy of the waivers is available by written request under the Freedom of Information Act.
	With respect to all other meeting participants we ask in the interest of fairness that they address any current or previous financial involvement with any firm whose product they may wish to comment upon.
	So ends the reading of the conflict of interest statement.
	Dr. Bolton, I turn the meeting over to you.
	DR. BOLTON:  Thank you, Dr. Freas.  I have very few remarks this morning. I would like to thank all the Committee members for returning after our epic meeting in June.  You are congratulated for surviving that ordeal, and I would, also, like to thank all the industry representatives and those members of the public who are at the meeting today.
	We have a very relaxed schedule for this meeting as opposed to our last meeting and one clear indication of that is that Bill told me that he left the timer out. So, I think we will be able to have free discussion and still be able to do a reasonable job of meeting our agenda targets.
	With that I think we should begin.  Our first topic today is the FDA's draft guidance on revised preventative measures to reduce the possible risk of transmission of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease by blood and blood products as published in the Federal Register August 29, 2001, and our first speaker is Dr. Dorothy Scott who will give the topic overview.
	Dorothy?
	DR. SCOTT:  Good morning. I think I will be presenting the results of all your hard work from the last long session that we had. 
	For the first topic I am going to review the FDA draft guidance entitled Revised Preventive Measures to Reduce the Possible Risk of Transmission of CJD and vCJD by blood and blood products.
	This was issued on August 27, of this year.  Just to very briefly let you know what the previous guidance said with regard to donor deferrals, the previous guidance recommended deferral of donor who had vCJD or CJD, risk factors for classical CJD as listed here and a geographic donor deferral for BSE exposure risk and this was for travel or residence in the United Kingdom for a cumulative period of 6 months or more between 1980 and 1996, or injection of bovine insulin that may have been sourced in the UK.
	Since the 1999 guidance there has been an increasing rate of the vCJD epidemic in the United Kingdom. This appears to continue statistically speaking. There has been an increased BSE epidemic detected in Europe. that is
more countries have been identified with BSE and more cattle in some countries have been identified.
	So, in some cases it is difficult to say that the epidemic is decreasing there. There was the often cited sheep transfusion transmission of BSE. So far we only know that one sheep had a transmission. However, the experiment is ongoing, and that particular report was a very preliminary report. So, we wait to see if more sheep come down with BSE, and finally there has been a continued scientific uncertainty as to whether variant CJD can be transmitted by human blood.
	So, all of this triggered the question whether we needed additional donor deferrals if they can be tolerated for risk of vCJD.
	This Committee considered increased donor deferrals for vCJD risk, that is BSE exposure at the last meeting as I am sure you remember.  You weighed the risk of shortage of blood and the need for precautionary measures against each other, and I just wanted to point out some of the aspects of this that make the whole decision-making process for many donor deferrals so difficult.
	The long incubation period of TSEs in general in humans and presumably vCJD although we don't know that, when we see epidemiological studies that are variable that might assure us that transmission with vCJD by human blood is unlikely, if transmission is possible, however, deferrals have current importance and it would be useful to implement  them now instead of to wait for this evidence to come to light.
	Studies on the infectivity of vCJD food are, also, quite limited to date. There are certainly a number of experiments ongoing, but we don't have those results.
	Formerly as you saw in the last meeting blood shortages are considered possible if longstanding deferrals are recommended.  
	So, you considered options for donor deferrals at the last meeting, and the options that you voted for were incorporated into the FDA draft guidance that was issued.
	The new donor deferrals which I will review in a minute decrease the total risk based upon exposure to BSE by about 90 percent and a 5 percent donor loss is anticipated for blood based on the web survey data that Alan Williams presented last time.
	I just want to highlight a couple of aspects of the guidance for you in addition to the donor deferrals. I will go through each of these, the first, implementation of the donor deferrals, pilot studies that are recommended for more stringent donor deferrals than the FDA recommended deferrals, the distinction that we are drawing between blood and plasma for the European donor deferral and finally a little bit about blood supply monitoring, but you are going to hear a lot more about that after I speak.
	There are two phases recommended in the draft guidance for donor deferrals, Phase I and Phase II, and these will be implemented at different times.
	Phase I, May 31, 2002 is the proposed data, and Phase II by October 31, 2002, and the purpose of this is to attempt to attenuate any impact of a sudden large deferral on the blood supply.
	So, the first set of deferrals is for residents in the UK for 3 months and more between 1980 and 1996. I will talk about that 1996 time period next because the Committee had some questions about that last time.
	France for 5 years or more between 1980 and the present, residence on a US military base for 6 months or more for these two different time periods here, and it is based on the British beef to Europe program. It is known for different portions or different locations in the military when British beef was actually sent to those bases and that is why we see the two different dates and finally for recipients of transfusion in the United Kingdom.
	Just to speak a little about this ending period of 1996, for the UK donor deferral this is based on our assurance of food chain controls which prevent entry of BSE animals into the human food chain.
	This is quite well summarized in a recent report called BSE in Great Britain:  A Progress Report. That is on the DEFA(?) web site. I have cited it here, but in particular by the end of 1996, the UK had implemented a specified risk material ban and this prevented more tissue and some of the tissue considered to be at risk for transmitting BSE. This specified the number of those materials from carcasses in a certain fashion. There was, also, a ban on mechanically recovered meat from vertebral columns because this meat can be cross contaminated with neural tissue, and they, also implemented the over 30 months scheme which means that cattle over 30 months would not be slaughtered for human consumption and cattle at 30 months and up are thought to have much higher infectious titers in them. They are all in other tissue, and that was the reason for that.
	I don't have a slide about enforcement. However, this web site does outline quite nicely the level of enforcement which includes a number of inspections, and you can actually access the reports of the enforcement and prosecutions of slaughterhouses and people who are responsible in case any problems are detected.
	There haven't been very many prosecutions, but they do appear to be careful to enforce these rules.
	This is just so that you can see that other British endeavors have had an effect. Here we have the cases of BSE by year of report in the UK through June 30, 2001, and you can see that there is a decline in BSE epidemic indicating the effectiveness of their ban on feeding of meat and bone meal to ruminants.
	You will see that the BSE epidemic peaked around 1992, and then continued to fall off considerably until we have 2001 here.  Now, even though 311 BSE cows is a lot compared to most other European countries you  need to remember that these cattle have been detected and that there is a specified risk material ban. So, theoretically even an infected cow which could enter the food chain would have its infectivity removed.
	I, also, want to quickly mention non-European BSE. Just after the time when we  issued the draft guidance a case was reported of BSE in Japan and this was confirmed and import ban was announced for ruminant materials from Japan.
	I don't want to single out Japan, however. It is believed that the BSE in Japan is derived from meat and bone meal from the UK was fed to Japanese cows, and we do know from UK export data which is, also, on the web that a fair amount of meat and bone meal went to other Asian countries.
	So, this is something that we will probably have to address in the near future. However we feel the need to assimilate the current donor deferrals and then to consider additional deferrals for other countries and to bring that to the Committee to think about in a more comprehensive fashion.
	Again, this emphasizes that food chain controls are important because it is quite possible that many other countries will have cases of BSE as time goes by.
	This is the second phase of recommended deferrals for implementation in October 2002. This is deferral of blood donors who have lived in Europe for 5 years or more between 1980 and the present.
	Donors of source fluids meant for plasma derivatives will remain eligible and that is what I want to talk about next.  With regard to source fluids, we know that model TSE agents are partitioned and removed during plasma fractionation. 
	We, also, know from at least two different laboratories some unpublished data which shows that the variant CJD agent appears to behave like other TSE agents in these kinds of spiking and removal scale-down studies for plasma fractionation.
	Also, it is interesting to consider that the magnitude of risk reduction achieved by plasma fractionation at a minimum is probably a couple of logs greater and in some cases likely to be much more than that achievable by any donor deferral.
	We, also, heard at the last meeting a lot of concerns about the effects of such a European donor deferral for donors of source plasma on nationwide and worldwide plasma supplies and therefore supplies of plasma products, some of which have been in shortage recently including plasma-derived Factor 8 or near shortage anyway.
	There has been a tension in the market, and IGIV, a shortage which we experienced before in the setting of the classical CJD donor deferrals.
	So, the effects, of course, are uncertain because we don't understand the elasticity of the source of plasma supply, but are potentially severe.
	We hope to bring this issue in a more comprehensive fashion to the Committee in the near future.
	I, also, want to point out that source and recovered plasma are differentiated here to prevent potential errors in the use of deferred non-plasma components.
	We plan to re-evaluate this recommendation frequently in light of additional epidemiologic evidence, transmission studies and advances in the validation of removal of TSE agents by manufacturing.
	I just want to say a few things about supply of blood and blood components which is an issue that you all spent a lot of time on the last time. It is estimated that the current recommended donor deferrals would result in the loss of about 5 percent of donors by the blood study. We are aware that the Red Cross has, also, performed a donor survey, and they have different results for their deferrals but these two surveys were done in a different fashion and probably surveyed a somewhat different population.
	We know that these donor losses are likely to be higher in coastal cities and we, also, know that even with the FDA deferral that about 35 percent of the New York blood center supply will be affected and this is a combination of the loss of Euro-blood which is 25 percent and US donor deferrals because a lot of people in New York travel.
	The industry proposed deferrals or the other industry proposed deferral, the other deferral is for 3 months in the UK which we, also, have but 6 months in Europe and their study as I mentioned estimates a lower donor loss than ours did or the Red study did. They estimated 3 percent donor loss and we estimated a 9 percent donor loss, and I suspect that the truth lies somewhere in between and will be different for different blood establishments.
	When we met before you all were sufficiently concerned about supply that you suggested to us with regard to implementation of the new donor deferrals that a national recruitment campaign and a system to monitor adequate blood supply be instituted and I wanted to mention that Dr. Nightingale will be talking about the monitoring of the national blood supply just after I speak.
	Within the guidance we have added some things which we hope will attenuate the supply impact, the phased-in deferrals that I spoke of before, particularly making the European deferral later, and we feel that the Europeans compared with the people who at UK beef are at less risk and have had the least exposure to BSE. That was the rationale for making this particular deferral later than the others.
	We are, also, recommending that pilot studies be done by blood establishments who wish to have more stringent deferrals. This includes implementation of a pilot program demonstrating donor recruitment, evaluation of potential donor loss and donor loss and an end point for the pilot study itself at which time a decision will be made either to have a new pilot study or to implement the deferral or a different deferral.
	In addition, we have asked that recruitment efforts be monitored for their success and that fluctuations in hospital demand for blood products be monitored.
	As I mentioned, Dr. Nightingale will discuss national monitoring of the blood supply and demand. This is virtually in place. We do encourage enhanced donor recruitment, and we are aware that this is already occurring, and we have encouraged cooperation among blood establishments to provide each other with supplies in case of regional shortages.
	In summary, the future of the draft guidance is collection and evaluation of comments to the docket, and this comment period if about to end.
	To date we have received approximately 20 comments, and many of these have to do with the phased-in implementation with source versus recovered plasma and general streamlining of the guidance which if you read it you might, also, have similar comments.
	We plan to issue the final guidance with revisions in a very short time frame. We, also, plan the monitoring of the blood supply as the recommendations are put into effect and we plan to continue the assessment with your assistance and advice of blood and plasma risk and benefits of these types of geographic donor deferrals.
	Thank you very much.
	DR. BOLTON:  Thank you, Dorothy.
	We have time for some questions from the Committee if there are any for Dorothy.
	DR. LEITMAN:  Dorothy, did you receive any comments on the difficulty of donor screening in determining if members of the military had been stationed north of the Alps or south of the Alps and is that part of the streamlining of that, sort of difficult donor  questions that the guidance proposes?
	DR. SCOTT: It does seem difficult, but actually we have a list of which countries are north and south of the Alps, which military bases were north and south and it really only amounts to, never mind the UK, because that deferral is more stringent, three  countries north and I think five countries south, and I don't want to name them because I will miss one of those five, but we haven't heard from the military whether they find this difficult and from others we have a lot of general questions about streamlining the donor questions, and I think there might be a screening question that could be asked before going into all of these details and that may be true for some of the others, and I hope, I imagine, I think that we will be flexible enough to be able to allow streamlining of donor questions whenever possible.
	DR. BOLTON: Other questions, Steve?
	DR. DE ARMOND:  I have a couple of questions but mostly for clarification in my own mind.  The drafts of the proposals that are sent to us and they were present at the last meeting it came up, there was an idea that there was a 5 percent risk of getting variant CJD in Europe versus compared to Great Britain, and it wasn't clear to me how those risk factors were actually derived because that ultimately led to a change in the time in Europe for deferrals from 10 years to 5 years.
	These calculations are, at least I don't follow  them.
	DR. SCOTT: Right, and this is understandable. It seems to be a complex set, but basically the time spent in the UK which is just called a risk of one and everything else is compared to the UK. So, the French ate at worst approximately 20 percent British beef. The military ate at worst 35 percent British beef. The UK deferral that we are asking for is 3 months, and so if you calculate that up for eating only 20 percent British beef that becomes 5 years France, and the rest of Europe we are actually in a sense being conservative.
	The BSE epidemic in Europe is probably about 1.5 percent that of the UK. So, we could make a European donor deferral longer but it seems simpler to keep France and Europe together and it seemed also, that we felt it was possible to tolerate by climbing the donor deferral.  So, it is based on two things. One is the consumption of UK beef and the other is female BSE worst case in other European countries which probably did not consume a great amount of UK beef. So, there are actually two different factors that go into calculating roughly the kinds of deferrals to have for these countries, and we tend to take the worst case and sort of, for Europe and have all the European countries be worst case even though we know that there are European countries with no BSE, no more likelihood of BSE according to the scientific steering committee on the geographical BSE risk, and they didn't get much British meat and bone meal. 	DR. DE ARMOND: I understood the two parameters, but the numbers, how you mathematically got to these numbers was sort of not clear to me. 
	DR. BOLTON:  The 5 percent comes from the importation of UK beef.
	DR. DE ARMOND: Yes, I understand all of that, but still going from 10 years to 5 years --
	DR. BOLTON:  Just because the UK deferral went from 6 months to 3 months.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  Okay.
	DR. SCOTT: So, that normalizes it to the UK deferral.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  The other question I had was regarding this. There is something I guess I missed at the last meeting regarding fractionation resulting in a reduction of a 2-log greater reduction in CJD titer I guess than donor deferrals could generate. Is that right?
	DR. SCOTT:  You actually didn't miss that because it wasn't stated, and it is stated in a general way. What we have is a series of studies, different studies but mostly spiking studies of TSE agents into intermediates during plasma fractionation for different processes, and this is summarized in Peter Foster's paper that was included in your handout, but what is generally the case is that you have a number of logs of removal of these spiked TSE agents during plasma fractionations and during different processes. So, we were saying only in a very I would say broad sense not a, I don't want you to take this as a strictly numeric sense but many logs of infectivity can be removed in these kinds of studies.
	You can argue about the details of the studies, perhaps and how relevant they are, but these are the kinds of studies that we, also, accepted as supporting evidence for stopping the withdrawal of derivatives for classical CJD risk.
	What we would like to do though is bring this to the Committee for at least one-half day of discussion and actual presentation of data, probably at the next meeting so that you can feel more comfortable with these kinds of studies, but it wasn't possible to do it for this meeting.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  Right because the implication might be that deferrals are not that important or I am not sure that you are saying that, but the way that statement is read it implies that the techniques of fractionating are actually pretty good at eliminating infectivity, but I am sure you are not saying don't defer.
	DR. SCOTT: I am not saying that. However, this point is being debated for plasma derivatives.
	DR. BOLTON:  Peter?
	DR. LURIE: I have two questions. First is for those of us who get easily confused by the numerous categories and numerous recommendations, just clarify for me the way in which this draft guidance differs from the recommendation of this Committee because I think I am correct, am I not that there is a change with respect to the plasma and plasma derivatives?  Can you just make that absolutely clear for us?
	DR. SCOTT: Right. Well, you had some hesitations concerning the potential problems with the plasma derivative supply.  First you have these donor deferrals from industry chiefly, and there was a considerable concern as you know that the plasma supply would be increasingly stretched especially if there were a European perception that their own plasma was not deemed, if you will, safe by the US, and I know that some Committee members actually said in the second part of the first day of the last session, began to be concerned about the effect of this European donor deferral, and I wrote the donor deferrals on the plasma derivative supply. So, we have written that section into the guidance because we feel that there is some scientific evidence to support it as well as a supply concern.
	Now, this probably needs to be explored at greater length with the Committee and I would point out that the European donor deferral planned implementation or suggested implementation time is next October. So, there is adequate time to continue this discussion if we feel it is important, and I think most of us do feel that that is important.  Is that in answer to your question?
	DR. LURIE:  You are explaining the answer to my question without giving me the answer.  It is a very simple question. I just want to know in exactly what ways the guidance differs from the advice of this Committee, just very concretely.
	DR. SCOTT:  We added the phased implementation.
	DR. LURIE: Right, for sure.
	DR. SCOTT: Right.
	DR. LURIE: With regard to plasma, that is my question.  I am clear in saying that there was no differentiation, right, between --
	DR. SCOTT: Right.
	DR. LURIE: I am trying to clarify this. You made no differentiation between --
	DR. SCOTT: -- in the way that I have already described. I can't think of any other way.
	DR. LURIE: Right. So, you made no differentiation between blood and plasma in UR; is that correct?
	DR. SCOTT: That is correct.
	DR. LURIE: That is what my question was. My second question, this may seem like a strange time to bring this up but anyway through this conversation about, going back for several years now, a lot has been made about the clinical or theoretical risk of this and so forth, and there have been a certain number of studies that are still ongoing, and again, in Britain it seems to be on the wane and hopefully one in Europe that will soon be on the wane as well and so my question is has the agency given any thought to the criteria that might be met which would result in your removing the deferral criteria that our Committee had suggested? Is there a set of, you know, a certain amount of time that might elapse with a certain number of cases, certain results of specific studies that it might actually say, "Okay, we have covered ourselves during this period in which much was unknown, but now enough data have accumulated and enough experience has accumulated, and we feel we can remove the restrictions"?
	DR. SCOTT:  That is a very useful question, and what we are thinking about is the possibility of removing some of these based upon the safety of the food chain and that was the rationale for making the UK deferral only until 1996, because we feel assured that people eating beef there after 1996 are at minimal if any exposure to BSE and so following that kind of logic you can imagine the possibility for re-entry as it were. However, the details of that sort of a plan have yet to be worked out, and again that is something I think the Committee would need to consider to have this lift.
	DR. BOLTON:  Additional questions?  Pedro?
	DR. PICCARDO:  Do you know to which other Asian countries besides Japan was UK feed shipped to?
	DR. SCOTT:  I don't want to single out any countries, but I would say quite a few, and larger amounts that went to Japan, considerably larger.
	Now, it is difficult to tell where UK meat and bone meal at the time of the peak BSE epidemic, how much of that went out that was made from pigs and how much was made from cattle. It is, also, hard to know for meat and bone meal when it is shipped out whether it is used for, even if it is labeled for use for chickens or fish whether it is actually used to feed beef.
	So, there are lots of complexities when you look at that, but a large number of Asian countries I would say 10 or 12 at least are in the UK export data. So, it is not a small or simple problem.
	DR. BOLTON:  Any more questions, from the public?
	No. Okay, very good. Thank you very much, Dorothy.
	Next we will receive an update on the current state of the blood monitoring project and plans to extend monitoring to the supply of plasma derivatives and their recombinant analogues from Dr. Stephen Nightingale.
	Steve?
	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  Thank you very much.
	We can possibly go to a slide show, but this is going to be a true multimedia presentation here, and I apologize for the delay. Give me just a minute.
	I have two talks and 20 minutes to give the two talks in, and I will try to keep to my limit. The first talk is about monitoring of the supply of and demand for blood products and plasma derivatives, their current status.
	I would like to begin by noting that  we collectively, that is the blood community, has been monitoring plasma derivatives since October 1998.  This program was initiated by what is now known as the PPTA through a contract through Georgetown Economic Services and that program continues. It is monthly and sometimes bimonthly reporting and the monitoring of blood products was instituted in October 1999.
	This was originally funded by the  National Institutes of Health and for the last year by the Department of Health and Human Services with a contract to the National Blood Data Resource Center.
	This is an example of the data that we have received from the plasma monitoring, and I have chosen it because it is the plasma derivative of immediate interest.
	What you have here is the --
	DR. BOLTON:  May I interrupt you for a second?
	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  You certainly can, Mr. Chairman.
	DR. BOLTON:  There still seems to be some problem with the zoom on your slide. I don't know if that can be rectified.  If not, you may have to do more explaining of each slide to let us know what that means.
	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  There is always something going on over your shoulder.  What I can see and you can't is that the top of the slide here says, "Monthly ratio of inventory to release of recombinant Factor 8."  That is not a good idea.
	(Laughter.)
	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  I reiterate my previous statement.  Let us leave it here, and maybe I can give 11 minutes of presentation.
	The basic unit that we have used both with plasma and in blood has been the ratio of inventory to release. In common parlance that is an analogy for number of days of inventory which you have in a commercial enterprise. For example, Ford has a 70, a 50 or a 30 day supply of cars that it has to sell.
	What you are looking at here is the ratio. The blue is the months of inventory of human high-purity Factor 8 and what you are looking at in the turquoise is the months' inventory of recombinant Factor 8. 
	What you can see here there has been a lot more inventory of the red in September 2000, about 3.3 months' inventory, months' supply of human Factor 8 and not a whole lot, about a 3-week supply of recombinant Factor 8, and what you see over the past year and now right up to September is that the inventory of the manufacturers of recombinant factor 8 is low and getting lower and the supply of human factor 8 would appear to be substantial. At least it has a face value that is higher than for recombinant but now is approaching the levels of recombinant.
	The fact is that we know from reports from the community that there are shortages of recombinant and the human Factor 8 is at very best tight right now. I have shown this slide, however, to show you that there are limitations to the data that we collect right now.
	The limitations are first of all there is an uncertain relationship in the data that I just presented you on supply and demand, and at what point was the supply of recombinant Factor 8 really truly short?  Was it when one person couldn't get it?  Was it when 100 persons couldn't get it?  Was it when 3 percent of the population couldn't get it?  That uncertain relationship to demand is the key intellectual question that we are still struggling with.
	The second question is the timeliness of the reporting. When reports are gathered over a 1-month period, commented over the following month, and you get them 45 days after the trial reporting period that is really late in the game for just about anybody because you are going to hear reports of shortages before that time.
	The lag time from a practical perspective in monthly data collection has proven not to be satisfactory for government, for industry or for consumers, and the third issue is the transparency of the process.  I am not going to risk going back to the previous slide.  I have had enough trouble so far, but there was one point in March 2001 where we didn't have a report on the supply of recombinant because there were only two manufacturers there and the rules of the game that were established were that you had to have three manufacturers to get a report. So there were times when we really would have wanted to know what the score was, and we did not get a score.
	For the blood reporting contracted for a representative sample blood establishments producing the government did not know the identity of the blood establishments and that was not as problematic for us.
	So, about the time that I spoke to you in June we had had a meeting of our Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability, and we were in fact making plans to upgrade our data monitoring for both blood and plasma, and so we had a head start, and we surely needed it. 
	What we are doing right now is we are doing daily demand, daily monitoring of blood demand at the hospital level.  The idea was that we were initially working with inventories on the producer side. We wanted to move down into the inventories on the consumer side, and the consumer in this particular case is the hospital.  It is the factor if you will on behalf of the patient for providing the blood.	
	We have recruited 26 geographically distributed hospitals, two per city or per region and three regional blood banks. They are in the Northeast and within Brigham and Women's in Boston, Sinai, Columbia, Jamaica, Maimonides in New York, the Georgetown Hospital Center in DC; that is the northeast region, Brady and Emory in Atlanta, Mt. Sinai. In Miami we are going to have Jackson when they can come online.  On the Gulf Coast we have Navy and Oxford Clinic. In Dallas and the remainder of the South we have Baylor and Parker(?) Hospital.
	In the Midwest we have University of Minnesota. I see Dr. McCullough there, Indiana University, University of Illinois, Central Campus and Northwestern and I keep remembering that I should mention that I have a conflict here. My wife is employed by Northwestern University Medical School.
	We have University of Iowa and we have St. Alexis Hospital in Bismarck, North Dakota.  We do plan to add another community hospital in the Midwest.
	In the West we have Harbor and Cedars in LA. We have Denver General, not Denver General, I mean the University of Colorado and the University of Arizona at Tucson, and we plan to add another southwest border hospital to our group. We have the regional blood centers in Tampa, St. Pete, Pittsburgh and Seattle as well.
	All of these sites, particularly the individual hospitals are intended to be set in their ways and representative. That was the original and that remains our purpose.  It seems valuable to ask if 1 percent, 2 percent or 3 percent of hospitals are short of blood articles. If we get a report that a hospital is short on a particular day we want to know why that hospital is short, and particularly we want to know why that hospital is short and another sentinel hospital nearby is not short.
	We are trying to make this, if you will therapeutic rather than just descriptive, and we haven't gotten there yet.
	The idea behind the study is to correlate the inventory, the days of inventory with occurrence of an actionable shortage. We ask all our sites to indicate in addition to their inventory data any actions that they took in response to finding that their supply was inadequate to meet demand, and we are monitoring them by ADA and Rh platelets, by random and aphoresis(?) and by shortage reports.
	On the first point I need to get out of here and go to my Excel files.  What we do right now is generate a graph that looks like this. This is our data and I apologize. You cannot see the baseline that I can. The baseline here is the one that begins on August 1. We had several sites collecting in July but we really didn't have everybody up to speed until the first of August and we have retained the data. We paid for the data, but this is the point at which we started having the majority of our hospitals reporting.
	The baseline, this is for inventory of all red cells combined and it is particularly unfortunate but right on the other side is the scale. We are going from August 1, through October 15, and the scale here, this is 8.0 days' supply. We have on average, what I reported to my advisory committee on August 24, was an average of 7.4.  It is pretty close to an 8-day average.
	What you are looking at here at the top is the median. This is the 15th out of the 29 sites, and this is their inventory in days. That would be about 8.6.
	You will see a periodic pattern. That pattern is a weekly pattern. I am sorry it didn't project here of the inventory throughout Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and they go down on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday and they go back up again.
	I point that out that we have sufficient number of sites, and we can reach in and we can measure the weekly variation in inventories, and you see this in individual sites, in most of the individual sites, certainly for A positive and O positive and for O negative it gets a little tricky. In the hope that this will come out a little clearer, well, it did not, but this is from our, this graph is from October 1, through October 23.  
	What we do on a daily basis is we get our updated Excel file and we run a program and we look sometimes briefly but we look at the data from every site and the aggregated data.
	So far what we have seen is a pretty consistent pattern.  I think in the interests of time I will just go over, I will just show you the aggregated data.  I had not been requested to show the individual sites which is some of the individual site data confirmation but we do break this down by A positive, O positive and O negative and perhaps just for the record note I am sorry but I don't have my baseline here and I am not going to get into it, but I have mailed this data out to the advisory committee mailing list, to our contractors and if anybody would like to review it with me I do have copies here, and I apologize for the technical difficulties.
	Now, I am going to try to go back to the slide show, and continue and see what happens. This is just a summary of the data that I showed you days' inventory for all red cells. I did not mention but at the bottom we also graph out the two lowest of the 29 sites and you can see here where they are and those two with a couple of exceptions have been 2 days' inventory.
	So, from the several sites there has been what appears to be an adequate collection, amount of blood but I want to qualify that with the following statement which is where are we going. This is clearly from the time thing a work in progress.
	A very conscious decision has been to make the progress of that work accessible to the public so that we can recruit comments, not all which have been failure to perform, but many have been, but one is appreciated more than the other but those are needed and that is the idea behind it.
	We are about halfway through the process of going to direct web site entry. We have one full-time person, Virginia Wannamaker who is the manager of the project. When she spends all day entering the data, she doesn't have time to analyze, to check the data. So, I think  15 sites are on.  We expect to have the other 14 on by November 15, and when we get them we enter them directly into the web. We will be able to implement a real-time data study technique.
	Somebody has say 100 units of A positive in inventory and somebody tells us that there are 10 units, and we are going to make a  phone call at the time and afterwards to see if there was a data entry error there and that is the first and we have time to scramble between them.
	The platelet data monitoring, the supply of platelets is a complex one. There you have perhaps 1  day inventory of platelets and the platelet market turns over a whole lot faster.  One of our substantial concerns is for the adequacy of the platelet supply as well as the blood supply and that  is going to take a serious round of consultations with our contractors and with our public to figure out how to do that one right, and once we have gone there we want real time comments. Somebody sends in a letter that says that I was short for 4 hours, and we have a set of boxes right now that we are adding but we want to collect information.
	If there is a shortage situation we want to collect it in real time, and that probably is the bottom line for monitoring.  Then statistical analyses I would much rather give you box plots than give you medians and two letters. We need to get to cluster and discriminate analysis. For example, I think you see the weekly variation in our data. We need to get at, one of the variables is we have given the hospitals freedom to report their data anytime of the day that they want, but they are asked for a consistent time, but if you report at 4 o'clock in the afternoon you may or may not have more blood than you have at 8 o'clock in the morning. It kind of depends when the delivery truck comes around, how many times a day the delivery truck comes and what your sources are.
	For that we are going to need some decent statistical techniques and we just have to get time to set this up.  We are in discussions with the American Red Cross and America's Blood Centers. Let me state this very publicly. The problem is really not them.  I have been busy, being very straightforward, and I want to make sure that that is on the record.  I sent them an e-mail on Tuesday saying, "Can we talk?"  I got responses back in 30 minutes, and I am the one who didn't make the telephone call back.  We will get there when we can.
	We want public access to this data on the web site at the earliest possible time. The contracts were initially for 6 months because this a learning project. We need to rebuild those. That takes a fair amount of time and not just the possible expansion of sites, and finally, the expansion of the model of the plasma derivative supply and demand that was not on this last slide here is to also get, is to decide how best we can make the utilization of data. 
	The current New England, the paper about mortality is and transfusion in patients with heart attacks has some very interesting data, HCFA data set that is complementary to the BURN(?) data. We have looked. Dr. Paul Ness has looked at the BURN data and there are lots and lots of problems with using BURN data as measures of utilization and one of the things that we would like to do and we cannot do everything at once is to try to monitor or at look at utilization as a factor influencing supply.
	That is a summary of the monitoring project to date before I go to the September 24, meeting.
	Dr. Bolton is it okay if I ask for comments and questions on this presentation?
	DR. BOLTON:  Sure. I think that would be useful. Are there any questions from the Committee?
	Dr.Lurie?
	DR. LURIE; Steve, I hate to do this but can you go back to that first slide of the data in turquoise and blue and whatever else, turquoise and purple, I guess.
	It is the first PowerPoint or the second PowerPoint.
 	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  The PowerPoint, sure.  I will be glad to.  You never expect an easy question from Dr. Lurie.
	DR. LURIE: I guess what strikes me about these data, aside from the apparent trend downward is that from month to month there are some fairly big fluctuations downward, and some of those look to me to exceed 1 month of decrease in inventory over 1 month, and if one assumes that the demand for these factors remains stable and that there is absolutely zero production of the factor in question that would lead to a 1 month decrease in inventory. So, how do we get decreases that sometimes exceed that?
	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  You picked up the limitation of using days of inventory, weeks of inventory, months of inventory as a measure of either supply or demand, and that is one number divided by the other number and there we are. That is a hyperbolic function, and that means it is not a linear function, and what that means is that these numbers are difficult to interpret literally.  There really is an intellectual question here. I suspect that Dr. Ewenstein wants to answer the question for me.
	This is where we are to date with what I would like to call the science of measuring. We definitely have a way to go.
	DR. EWENSTEIN: I am not sure if this is the answer but this is US distribution, but the inventory could be distributed worldwide.
	So, if you had an increase in non-US distribution it would account for your greater than 1 month decline. I mean I think it is a real issue that we have to grapple with because you are not really comparing apples and apples.
	DR. LURIE: Obviously something has to be done  about that problem, but that is the explanation.
	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  Yes, and I think, also, that this is data from the manufacturers. In the blood business we have a simple economic model which is that there are manufacturers and that there are consumers and the manufacturers are at the Red Cross agency and to some extent the big three, Tampa, St. Pete, Pittsburgh and Seattle, the big community blood bank and the  hospitals are consumers.
	That actually works except the consumers are a very heterogeneous lot. In the plasma business there are intermediaries and the question is how to measure those intermediaries, and the second question is how to do that without violating individual rights, trade secrets, confidentiality and that is a really important political question.
	DR. BOLTON:  Other questions from the Committee?  
	Yes, Ray?
	DR. ROOS: Steve, my perception is that blood donors increased in September as a result of the World Trade Center events, and it wasn't obvious in my quick inspection of the Excel graph that you had.
	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  We did not see a substantial change in  the inventories at the hospitals around the country consequent to the September 11, events. 
	There is, and Dr. Jones is on the front lines here, and so I am going to send you into his answer. In October, yes, there is a real average increase, at least 5 percent I think increase. What I would like to be able to get at is to be able to quantify that increase for you, but I have got the weekly jiggles and I have got the jiggles for the time of day, and I really need to get a SAS(?) program called X12 out to filter those things out before I could quantitate it. What we have through August is that our sites, and these are our 29 sites, not all the sites in the country, but 29 of them, we are running on average about a 7-to-8-day inventory of all products, and that did not change after September 11, but Dr. Jones is the expert on September 11.
	I think Dr. Jones has some additional comments.
	DR. JONES:   Yes, it is well known there is a real nationwide now worldwide blood gut after the eleventh and what you are seeing here I think on your Sunday is you are seeing the capacity of the blood banks. They cannot take any more.  In fact, if you really want to get an idea of how much blood there is you measure the cubic inches left in the blood centers' refrigerators because it  is really strange that you don't see that there but in blood centers I am sure if you were measuring those you would see a  huge increase in the inventories.
	DR. BOLTON:  Dr. Stroncek?
	DR. STRONCEK:  Speaking from our center or centers that collect blood I think you have to make the distinction between transfusion services and blood collection centers. You know your model is just looking at transfusion services. Red cells have a short outdate you know 42 days. Platelets have 5 days. You are out of your mind if you have more than 7 days of blood at a hospital. You don't buy this stuff to have it outdate and eat the cost. So, I think the fact that this is not showing up is a huge flaw in this kind of data and I think it is a huge disservice to collect this kind of data and distribute it if it doesn't reflect such a dramatic  thing. 
	For our experience blood centers really do have a lot of blood they are outdating. They have a huge amount and if you are going to collect the data it should reflect the situation. Otherwise you should just forget it and not collect the data.
	DR. MC CULLOUGH:  I do think it is necessary to make a response to that.  We do collect data on outdating as well as data on exporting as well as data on transfusing. We don't see a lot of outdating. I think that I would just say that perhaps I have become though I am a nephrologist, an expert in the management of blood centers because of the data that has come to me and that I am trying to give to you and there are certainly many perspectives than the one that Dr. Stroncek just articulated.
	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  I have it here. I have 29 of them, and we are going to hear about that in a little bit.
	DR. BOLTON:  Dr. McCullough has a question?
	DR. MC CULLOUGH:  It is more of the same.  I think Steve has done a great job of getting this project up and running, and this is a good illustration of how it is at kind of Phase I.  For the benefit of many to emphasize this does reflect what a hospital needs to have on the shelf in order to deal with the patients in that hospital. It doesn't reflect the availability of the nation's blood supply. It illustrates demand and nationwide we wouldn't have expected to see any difference in this data because nationwide there wasn't a net increase that was that noticeable in the demand and actual use of blood as a response to September 11.  So this is what we would have expected to see.
	Hopefully, as Steve expands this activity, a separate parallel set of data about blood availability can also, total blood availability in the US can be developed. This is just what is available in these hospitals as a way of indicating whether they have an adequate supply on their shelves. It doesn't indicate what is available in their supplier's refrigerators.
	DR. BOLTON:  Let me briefly ask a question? Is this somewhat the fluctuation of the data smoothed out because your graph is showing the median data point? Is that right?  You are not showing the extreme, either the highest or the lowest.  
	DR. MC CULLOUGH:  In these 29 hospitals there wasn't a huge increase in the use of blood after September 11. That is what it is showing.
	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  The bottom two numbers for the 29 hospitals are shown on the bottom graph here, and you can see that there are a few circumstances where hospitals reported a net of less than 2 days' supply. There are in fact a couple of hospitals with good relationships with suppliers that have lower inventories than others. There are variations in inventory practice which I think are less appreciated within the community than I might have anticipated there were. I guess I might say there is less conversation in the hallways than I had anticipated.
	DR. BOLTON:  Dr. Stroncek can correct me if I am wrong, but I think his point was that it did not show the glut of that he expected should be shown and I think that would only be reflected if you were showing the highest supply, in other words the center or hospital with the highest supply, and I take it  that the purple graph is the medium number. So, in fact, those data may be there and if they were replotted you would have very high numbers in some areas. Is that correct?
	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  Yes. Oh, yes.
	DR. MC CULLOUGH:  I don't think so.  The glut of blood as I think Dr. Jones could elaborate, the extra blood stays in the blood center if the hospital doesn't need it, and these are 29 hospitals.  Our blood center had like 5000 extra units of blood. The amount of blood we had in the hospital didn't change because we didn't have any patients that were affected by September 11. So our numbers aren't going to change, and you see hospitals, most of them; there are a few in New York City but most of the 29 didn't have any difference in their medical practice. So, the number won't change.
	DR. BOLTON:  I guess then going back to Dr. Stroncek's question is it valuable to have that kind of fluctuation at the centers reflected in this data in some way?
	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  I don't understand the question. The data is the data.
	DR. BOLTON:  But it is apparently not reflecting the ebb and flow of collections at the centers as opposed to at the actual hospitals. In other words it  may be more the supply and then the consumer now.
	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  Okay, what you are looking at here is the consumer, and we are using days of inventory in the hospital as our best approximation for measure of demand. As I said, we are in discussion with the Red Cross and with America's Blood Centers to identify and measure what we would all be comfortable with as a measure of supply and right now that data comes say in advertisements in the New York Times, and occasional, and it links around September 11. I think we all know that data, but that data is, also, data that I must emphasize is for very legitimate reasons confidential until released by those agencies.  Perhaps the misunderstanding between Dr. Stroncek and myself was in my presentation for which I apologize but I didn't specifically emphasize that what we are looking at here that is new is the measure of demand. The measure of supply is of interest and to be blunt if I am in a hospital and I need a blood transfusion I am not interested in supply. I am interested in the demand being met and that is where we made the transition to the system we are going to right now.
	DR. BOLTON:  Dr. Fitzpatrick, let us not keep you standing any longer.
	DR. FITZPATRICK:  That is okay. I stand all the time anyway, a lot more lately.
	Just to go back to Dr. Stroncek's question and maybe to help Steve a little since September 11, we have been receiving reports of the supply in the nation for both military and civilian blood.  The supply has at least doubled, perhaps tripled but to go back to the idea about expiration there is this perception that we are going to see this huge increase which has leveled out actually. We have been seeing the sustainment of the level of about 500,000 units of blood available in this country. It is taking a little dip now, but we are seeing a little fluctuation, but we are not seeing -- it is now 43 days past the event but you went from a 2-or-3-day or 4-or-5-day depending on however you want to parse out the days of supply to 7 to 10 days of supply of a 42-day dated product.
	We should not, if we are managing that inventory anticipate a huge expiration because we should be transfusing and meeting the demand that Steve was showing with this now increased supply of 7 to 10 days as opposed to now if we had a 45-day supply then I would expect to see a huge increase in expirations.
	We are seeing some isolated increases in expirations. We, the DOD are seeing some increases in expirations because I don't have quite the flexibility in Uzbekistan, Oman, Saudi Arabia and other sites to rotate the inventory. So, once it goes it is pretty much gone, but within the country we don't anticipate, and I don't see from the figures we are gathering that there is going to be a huge wastage of blood because good inventory managers should be managing that inventory and now they have a bigger inventory to manage, but it is not so big that they have so much excess that there is going to be a huge outdate, I don't think. I just wanted to clarify that.
	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  I think there is a very important follow-up number that Colonel Fitzpatrick let out there and that is 500,000 units of inventory. If we just do very simple back-of-the-envelope math transfuse 13 million units a year that 500,000 is 1/26th of the year. That is a 2-week blood supply and that is reason for huge satisfaction right now.
	I think the concern that all of us have is putting out a number like that and say, "Okay, everybody go home."  That is the real danger in the project that I have undertaken is that it gives a false sense of security. I am very acutely aware of that and that is really the basis of the discussions that I kind of abbreviated between Dr. Marthan(?) and myself is how to provide the information to the public in a way that will not distract them and let me just pick a number out of the air.  Let us say 200,000 but what do I know, I am a nephrologist?  We don't know what the right, I as a nephrologist don't know what the right number is but we all what we all know is if somebody needs blood and cannot get it, we have got a shortage.
	DR. LURIE:  I think what follows from David's earlier comment is that the aggregated media data could well be hiding either successes, if you will, or failures and I think you often said that spot shortages are the issue more necessarily than aggregate shortages and so I think that is just one element.
	Second, you seem to depict the inventory data as the index of demand, right, if I can just say that and I am not sure that that is conceptually right. It strikes me that the inventory is not that. It has both a supply and a demand element to it. Indeed it is the balance between supply and demand that is reflected in the inventory. So, I am not sure that one should be looking at it quite that way.
	The third point is following up on Dr. Jones' comment it strikes me that an additional measure with making the percent of capacity, it seems that at least in New York they reached that capacity and these numbers, again, as you were saying there is in effect a limit to how much inventory one would want to accumulate and it would be useful to somehow include in the way the data are presented what that limit is.
	One aspect of that is that one would never have inventory demand, whatever, say, 10 days for red blood cells or another way would be to say that this is the fraction of capacity that we are at, and I think that would be frankly reassuring to people.
	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  Yes, I can make two comments. First of all, demand for those of you who know economics, one is price and you can only measure demand by price if you have a perfect market and what we have here is anything but an economically perfect market. 
	So, what we have had to look for is an opportunity cost and that is the sort of thing if I had $100,000 I would hire a sophisticated economist to write a paper on this subject. In fact, there is a good economist I would like to hire, Dr. Chevy at Boston University who has written some very intriguing work on this field, but we didn't have time for that in July. So, we picked this particular surrogate.
	The other point I would like to make is that we are trying to correlate an objective measure of the inventory switches that you have to take an action on a particular day. That is what I hoped we would report to you at the next meeting, but we have looked at objective actions.  I didn't have enough platelets. I didn't have enough red cells. We had to put off a liver transplant for 4 hours while we had that blood shifted from somewhere else. Those are the things on which we will be able to improve our measure of demand, but the measure of demand as you rightly pointed out isn't a perfect blend and my response to you is that we are aware of that and trying to improve it.
	DR. BOLTON:  Speaking of opportunity costs we are falling behind. So, I am going to delay your question as to the Committee discussion after the next speakers and ask Stephen to move on to the update from the DHHS meeting of September 24, so we can proceed.
	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  This one I can, I promise, do on schedule. Bear with me. As I announced at the last TSE meeting there was scheduled in fact, occurred a meeting in the Office of the Secretary. It was on September 24, to address the question that is on the slide here.  Can the department's BSE action plan, the plan that I described to you at the June meeting be expanded to capitalize on the human physical resources, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries?
	The heading says that I am going to give you a brief summary of the meeting but I believe Dr. Freas that copies of the summary of this meeting are available or not?
	DR. FREAS:  The summary should be in the blue folders of each Committee member.
	DR. NIGHTINGALE:  Then you have a summary. So, I can make this even briefer than I might otherwise have made it.  The structure of the meeting was as follows:  Dr. Richard Johnson who can't be here today did give an overview of the NIH support programs. He identified approximately 70 grants and about $20 million that is currently funded by NIH.
	After that I had asked Drs. David Asher, Linda Detwiler and Peter Lurie to address the questions of what we do not know about TSEs from the perspective of a regulator of fluid parts, of animal parts and from the perspective of a consumer and it is my pleasure to refer you to the summary not because of the summary but because of the thoughtfulness of the presentations. I worked hard to try to capture the essence of what they said, but if I failed the transcript is available on the department's web site.
	I asked Mr. Jacklin and Dennis Berry to comment on the relationships of industry to government and Mr. Christopher Healy to comment on the willingness of the plasma therapeutics industry to participate in collaboratory research and Mr. Healy has been very constructive in that respect.
	Then, also, Dr. Robert Wiler and Dr. Neil Constantine made specific invited presentations. Dr. Ray is for a core laboratory facility to permit broader participation in BSE research. Dr. Constantine is for a collaboration among academic clinical pathologists to work on the mechanics of test development. 
	The boss then spoke and this is a summary of his remarks.  He said that the projections are there will be $30 million in Fiscal Year 2003 for BSETSE research and I am quoting here, and it is important that I do quote him accurately.  It is a scientific rather than a budgetary constraint and the actual amount depends on the science merit of proposals. He said that the scientific merit is judged by the independent peer review, said that more money could probably be spent, that he would do what he could to see that that was accomplished. He, also, said if the scientific proposals did not pass muster then we wouldn't spend the $30 million. We wouldn't spend the $30 million unless the government was getting its money's worth.
	He then asked the question do we now know enough to thoroughly and rapidly review any regulatory document instrument to anticipate that we deal with BSETSE issues. I will return to this question later, but his immediate follow-up is if not is industry interested in working with us to develop that aspect of scientific knowledge about BSE and TSE that both industry and government will need and finally, in response to a question, I believe this was from Dr. Drolpen the Secretary would consider suggestions to modify traditional grants programs particularly the time, the duration of those grants to meet the specific needs of BSE and TSE researchers.
	After the Secretary's comments we had a panel of eight presenters.  This is just the part that says, "Meeting summary No. 2, Dr. Sheath, Dr. Fells, Dr. Johan, Dr. Monser, Neyman, Aker, Grossman and Burke all gave presentations which the department once again thanks them for those efforts and after the presentation there was a period of discussion and I summarized that discussion in this slide.
	First in response to a question Dr. Johnson reiterated a point that was made in the BSE action plan that the principal bottleneck in his view to progress in this field was a shortage of investigators.
	Dr. Drohan gently but firmly challenged that position and he pointed out in the presentation at the meeting just his contention that in fact the bottleneck was not a shortage of investigators but a shortage of laboratory facilities for those investigators to work. I think it was fair to say on behalf of both that one of the question is not who do you count as an investigator but where do you count them. Is there a shortage in academics?  That is Dr. Johnson's expertise.  Is there a shortage in industry?  That is Dr. Drohan's expertise, and Dr. Drohan's comments at that time were very persuasive and they were followed by Dr. Rohwer who pointed out that there was a number of productive investigators in Europe as well. I think that Dr. Rohwer did recommend a recruitment effort, a brain drain. We are taking that consideration under advisement but we did take Dr. Rohwer's other statements very seriously.
	It was also pointed out by Mr. Hayward of Q-RNA that at that moment there was a shortage of venture capital and that could be considered something of a bottleneck. Mr. Dennis Jackman who had spoken earlier pointed that it is in industry culture and it is there to focus as much of the efforts as possible on the single surest path to a goal and that one thing that could benefit all concerned would be for facilities so that ideas that might take longer to develop or might have a higher risk in the short run could receive those scientific risks. There was a very pointed comment by Dr. Lynch that I recommend to you. Dr.Lynch was for many years a very valued employee of the government and we miss him.  His pungent comment was that there is a distinct data shortage of data for regulatory review and that is a comment that I think is very much worth repeating here, and an advantage of putting additional funds into research would be that it could address that need which might not be felt today but will certainly be felt soon if it is not addressed and finally, Dr. Dodd stressed the need to spend some time on the societal impact of various CJD screening in blood donors. So, in my final slide here we are.
	The proposal is on the table. Proceed with the NIH component and the action plan including the RFA but there has not been a lot of enthusiasm for the suggestion that specific prizes in this field be developed and that suggestion is not at this time under active consideration. 
	I have the core laboratory, Dr. Constantine's proposal is also under consideration as I understood the time frame on the 29th, and the small business innovation research grants for BSETSE research.
	I would be glad to answer any questions.
	DR. BOLTON:  Thank you, Stephen. I think what we should do is to hold the questions on this particular topic and proceed through our next four speakers so that we can then entertain questions for all of these areas after the open public hearing.
	So, at this time I would like to welcome Dr. Bianco who will begin the update on the anticipated implementation of the new donor deferral policies.
	DR. BIANCO:  Thank you, Dr. Bolton, and I hope that our statement that you all received this morning will help answer some of the questions that were raised earlier.
	America's Blood Centers as many of you know is a national network of locally controlled non-profit community blood centers that collect half of the blood supply from volunteer donors. Collectively we operate in 45 states and serve more than half of the nation's 6000 hospitals.
	ABC's total collection exceeded 6.7 million pints in the year 2000, and we thank the FDA for the opportunity and the invitation to participate in this public meeting.
	On June 28, 2001, exactly 4 months ago ABC expressed before this Committee its concerns about the impact that donor deferral policies designed to address the theoretical risk of transmission of CJD or variant CJD by transfusion could have on an already limited blood supply.
	At the end of August FDA issued its draft guidance, recommending that individuals who lived 3 months or more in the UK and 5 years or more in the remainder of Europe be deferred from donating blood.
	FDA, also, recommended the implementation in phases as Dr. Scott has presented to us and the estimate that 5 percent of our donor base would be lost on that.
	We are submitting comments to the draft guidance and those comments address operational issues and they actually do not alter the spirit of the guidelines.
	The most important issues that we are addressing in our comments are we asked CBER to eliminate recommendations to retrieve/quarantine/destroy all in-date products from donors  with classical or sporadic CJD because there was a lot of reasoning that has already been presented here that indicates that transmission of classical CJD by blood and blood products is unlikely.
	We urged CBER to modify the proposed donor classes to assure simplicity, clarity and better donor comprehension and finally, we expressed major concerns about the complexity of two different implementation dates, and we actually asked for a single implementation date in October that would ensure that education for donors, blood center staff, training and literature, donor registration cards and standard operating procedures would not have to be revised twice in a short period of time.
	Our position of our centers regarding the FDA draft guidance, ABC member centers strongly believe that FDA made a diligent effort to balance safety and availability.  Seventy-three of the 74 member centers that are based in the United States plan to implement the FDA recommendations as written and as stated in the final guidance. Only one of ABC member center plans to follow the American Red Cross deferral strategy. Thus, and that is a relatively small center, over 99 percent of the almost 7 million units that ABC collects will be performed according to the FDA recommended criteria.
	ABC members want to reaffirm their support of the FDA as the agency responsible for setting national blood safety guidelines.  We strongly disagree with the more restrictive approach adopted by the ARC because it may reduce the donor base by 8 to 9 percent or maybe less according to their data, without the benefit of additional protection. Both the FDA algorithm and the ARC algorithm achieve statistically identical protection from theoretical risk. The difference, and it is an important difference is in the donor loss.
	I would like to touch upon Tuesday, September 11. As we prepared ourselves for the potential major blood shortages associated with the precautionary deferrals our lives changed.
	In less than an hour after three airplanes hijacked by terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, thousands of Americans donated blood in anticipation of the needs of survivors. Blood centers soon were overwhelmed by the public response.
	By late Wednesday blood center refrigerators were full, their staff exhausted and their hospitals supplied with all their needs for days to come, and I think the data show exactly that.
	Within 24 hours of the attack concerns about the availability of blood and blood products turned into concerns about excess collection, outdates and potential shortages in the weeks ahead because many donors scheduled to give in the coming weeks had responded to the current crisis.
	Tragically the need for blood was minuscule compared to the enormity of the attack. The New York Blood Center, a member of America's Blood  Centers that provides most of the blood used in the Greater New York City distributed only 600 additional units of red cells in the 24 hours that followed the attack or an increase of 20 percent over their usual daily distribution.
	Ultimately more than one-quarter million people and the exact number is 259,714 donated blood to ABC centers from Tuesday, September 11, through Sunday, September 16.
	Overall this represents nearly three times more blood than these centers would have collected in the same time frame.
	As a group ABC members collected a 10-day supply of blood in only 4 days.  ABC ha provided the Committee and the audience with reprints of a commentary that was published in the October issue of the Journal of Transfusion. It summarizes our experience in the weeks following the terrorist attack.
	ABC  worked closely with governmental agencies. FDA officials called us within hours of the attack to ask what was required to maintain an uninterrupted blood supply.
	The Army Services Blood Program Office of the Department of Defense was in continuous contact to offer assistance.
	On Friday, September 14, the Assistant Secretary for Health convened a meeting with officials from ABC, the American Association of Blood Banks, the American Red Cross and government branches involved in the emergency to evaluate the status of the blood supply and to provide the American public with a unified message about blood donations.
	We all agreed that the blood supply was sufficient to meet all anticipated short-term needs and that the nation's focus must change to assure the long-term needs over the ensuing months.
	Unfortunately, later that day ARC rejecting what we thought was consensus continued to issue calls for blood donations and the excess blood would be stored in a frozen blood reserve.
	I would like to talk a little bit about variant CJD deferrals in the future. Blood services in the United States as I said before have changed with a single devastating event. 
	We knew that the American population was willing to donate blood in a moment of national crisis. We saw it with the earthquake in San Francisco, the Gulf War, the Oklahoma City bombing and now the terrorist attack.
	We have documented that there is a strategic donor reserve ready to be mobilized in times of extraordinary need. What we don't know is whether we can sustain such a response as the urgency decreases but demand for blood increases.
	Our past experience led us to conclude that only a small portion of individuals donating during catastrophic events become regular donors.
	ABC members do not believe that frozen blood is an effective solution. Frozen blood is extremely valuable for maintenance of small rare blood repositories for patients with rare blood cell phenotypes like patients with sickle cell disease and thalassemia. The process is too slow and cumbersome for management of large inventories in national emergencies.
	ABC agrees with Carl Fitzpatrick from ASPPO. The best place to store blood is in the donor. ABC members are working actively to transform this good will and motivation to donate blood into a sustainable continuous contribution to the lives of patients in need.
	We are investing in extensive market research to learn how these  individuals can be persuaded to donate more often. We will launch a major member initiative, donor initiative campaign in a few weeks and continue through the introduction of variant CJD deferrals to assure that hospitals and patients served by ABC centers have an adequate blood supply.
	We will, also, contribute to the HHS efforts in data collection for monitoring the adequacy of the blood supply. We can provide supply data.  Our initial monitoring system will be implemented in the next few weeks, 2 weeks actually, and I would like to thank you very much for the opportunity to present our point of view, and I don't know if you want me to answer questions.
	DR. BOLTON:  No, I think we will hold questions until after all the speakers have had a chance to speak.
	Thank you, Dr. Bianco.
	Our next speaker is Ms. Jacquelyn Fredrick from the American Red Cross.
	Ms. Fredrick?
	MS. FREDRICK:  Thank you.  Mr. Chairman and members of the Advisory Committee, we are delighted to be able to share with you our experiences of the last 4 months in ensuring the availability of the blood supply and preparing for variant CJD deferrals.
	The Red Cross is committed to developing a stable and sustained blood supply to meet increasing patient needs and hospital demand for these life-saving products. 
	In June we briefed this Committee on our plans to make chronic cyclical shortages a thing of the past. We shared with you the new systems we were implementing to monitor the amount of blood collected, distributed and inventoried at all of our blood centers nationwide as well as the market research and outreach programs to reach our generous blood donors.
	Even prior to the attacks on our country the summer campaign highlighted our ability to increase blood collections by using the right strategy and resources.  Our goal is now to sustain this effort.
	By expanding and refining strategies we are working to ensure that we will collect 9 million units of blood within 5 years.
	I would like to share with you our ability to respond to the blood availability needs of these past months. First, let me address issues in New York.
	The Red Cross is committed to meeting the patient needs throughout the country.  In June the Committee heard from New York City hospitals, the New York Blood Center, the New York Health Commissioner, Dr. Novella about concerns related to the potential impact of an expanded donor deferral criteria for variant CJD.
	It was estimated that the deferral would result in cancellation of over 7000 transfusions each month in the New York and New Jersey hospitals in the metropolitan area. 
	In August the Red Cross responded to this need b announcing plans to provide blood to the New York City area to avert any supply crisis during a transition away from the area's dependence on European blood.
	In August in response to these concerns and after discussions with the FDA and  the State of New York officials the American Red Cross committed to provide 180,000 units of blood in order to cover the loss of blood imported from Europe by the New York Blood  Center as well as the potential loss of donors in the New York City area.
	We communicated this pledge of assistance to the FDA, New York Blood Center, the New York State Public Health Commissioner, the Greater New York Hospital Association and to the New York Congressional Delegation.
	As I said, back in January the first time we had presented to this Committee we believed it was the responsibility of all the blood providers to come to the aid of the patients in New York.
	Turning to the events of September 11, the Red Cross was, also, able to immediately mobilize its unique national network to respond to the horrific attacks in New York City, Washington, DC and Pennsylvania.
	The Red Cross moved more than 5000 blood donations within hours to the two Red Cross blood centers closest to the metropolitan area.  This added to the already 5000 units already positioned around that metropolitan area in Washington, DC for a total of 10,000 units.
	Unfortunately, only about 1000 donations were actually shipped into the New York and New Jersey areas.
	I would now like to turn to the impact of the variant CJD deferral. The Committee has asked us to discuss the anticipated impact of an expanded donor deferral for variant CJD.
	As you know, the Red Cross implemented its new deferral policy for variant CJD on October 15, of this month. The Red Cross will defer donors who have spent time in the United Kingdom for accumulation of 3 months since 1980 or donors who have spent time in any European country for 6 months or more since 1980 or donors who have received a blood transfusion in the United Kingdom.
	In May to prepare for the expanded deferral the Red Cross commissioned Wirthlin Worldwide to perform a telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of Red Cross donors. Those were donors who had donated in the last 12 months to determine the number of individuals that would be deferred under the new Red Cross policy.
	The findings of this survey indicated a total of 3 percent of our eligible donors will be deferred with a margin of error of 0.6 percent and potentially additionally an additional 1 percent will erroneously self-defer even though they are actually eligible to donate.
	Taken together, the results of the survey indicate that within the Red Cross we could anticipate about 4 percent loss of our donors. 
	Since October 15, we have been monitoring the deferral rates on a daily basis across the nation to determine the impact of collection and make informed decisions about our collection goals.
	It appears that through our efforts to educate our current donors we have sent out about 5 million letters to our blood donors informing them of the change in our policy and encouraging them to donate if they were eligible.
	Education of our sponsors. The on-site deferral rates will be substantially lower than even 4 percent, and we had planned in our collection goals for an 8 percent loss.
	We have, also, turned our attention to increased collections. Prior to September 11, the Red Cross had already seen a dramatic increase in collections resulting from our initiatives to grow collections and mitigate any losses  anticipated from the expanded variant CJD deferral.
	Presenting donors to the Red Cross surged to 7.5 million in our Fiscal Year 2001, which was a 6 percent increase over prior year. 
	We had, also, implemented finger sampling for hemoglobin. If you had looked at discounting that and just looked at gross increases in presenting donors we actually saw an 8-1/2 percent increase in productive units.
	Our collections in July and August this year have increased 8 percent over the same months last year. The increased collections had a direct impact on our inventory.
	Our total red cell inventory was 33 percent higher this August than the past year and our type O inventory was 83 percent increased over last August.
	There has been a tremendous outpouring of Americans wishing to give blood in response to the attacks on our country.  In this period of uncertainty the Red Cross has a responsibility to be prepared for any contingency such as additional terrorist attacks on American soil or the potential to support the US military program.
	During the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks we expanded blood collection, storage and freezing capacity so that we would not have to turn away donors who were seeking comfort in donation with the Red Cross.
	We are now continuing those activities so that we can build and maintain a large readily deployable liquid inventory of blood and grow the frozen blood supply. 
	The 2-to-3-day inventory  of blood that was traditionally tolerated within this country is inherently inadequate. At present the Red Cross has at least a 10-day inventory and our goal will be to sustain that inventory between 7 and 10 days in a liquid form in addition to frozen blood reserves. 
	We continue to move forward with our long-term initiatives to build a stable and sustained blood supply. We have been forecasting collections for over a year and one-half and we continue to refine our projection and demand models.
	In conclusion, on behalf of the Red Cross I would like to thank you for this opportunity to provide our views and strategies to increase blood collections. We are confident and optimistic that the goals of safety and availability can be achieved through dedicated resources, coherent strategies that we are implementing throughout the Red Cross system.
	Thank you.
	DR. BOLTON:  Thank you, Ms. Fredrick.
	Next is Dr. Robert Jones from the New York Blood Center.
	DR. JONES:  Good morning. I would like to first thank the Committee for the opportunity to address you again. It is getting to be a regular visit.  If you will, this is our report from ground zero.
	September 11, certainly changed our world and at least temporarily it, also, altered the landscape of blood donor recruitment and blood supply.
	Suddenly we went from suffering the perils of chronic blood shortages to dealing with the equally problematic issues of acute oversupply and system overload.
	Relative to the rise in new blood donor deferrals released as draft guidance from the FDA we have experienced some setbacks in implementing the plan initiatives because we suddenly had other priorities related to the World Trade Center attack.
	The setbacks are related to delays dealing with our European partners for planning the phase-out of Euro-blood, postponements of meetings with the military and delays in  dealing with alternative US suppliers in addition to putting off some of our initiatives that we had implemented prior to September 11.
	As a review I would just like to remind you we stand to lose approximately 210,000 red cell units from the New York City affected blood supply which is a combination of Euro-blood, 180,000 units which counts the type mix effect and 30,000 units of our own collection, so a total of over 25 percent of the area supply.
	Now, pending further discussions with Europeans in publishing a final guidance we now see phasing out approximately half of the European supply at the end of May and the remainder at the end of October 2002.
	Our own donor losses from pan-European deferrals will be absorbed in October as well.  These supply gaps will be made up by a combination of increasing our own collections and purchase of red cells from ABC centers BCA, Blood Centers of America and the American Red Cross.
	These purchasing arrangements are being finalized as we speak. We expect that the relative contributions from collections and purchases will be about equal through the end of October. After October 2002, the contributions from NYBC collections will continue to rise as a percentage of the total supply.
	We are very hopeful as others that the surge of new blood donors as a result of September 11, attacks will add to the overall donor base of our collections. We now have active programs in place to engage the thousands of donors who were asked to defer donation during the disaster or who were first-time donors that we actually collected.
	However, with optimism and with the current oversupply there are warnings that the supply may be less stable than when we were dealing only with chronic shortages.
	Consistently surges of massive appeals are followed by proportional troughs of donations that can lead to shortages.
	Furthermore, and this is a point I will expand upon after Colonel Fitzpatrick's remarks, massive outdating and disposal of red cells from the overcollections following the attack will become public. It is not a day that goes by now that I don't have two or three reporters who are inquiring about our supply and what our plans are to do with oversupply.
	We really won't have any precise or accurate ideas of what outdating might look like until probably about 2 weeks.
	Now, the reaction of the donor base to these public events is unpredictable, and we feel must be carefully managed in order to recognize the educational opportunity regarding the perishable nature of blood.
	The public, one of the things we consistently learn from the public as we have a lot of time to talk to them when they are standing around waiting to donate blood, they simply do not understand that this is a perishable product.
	Whereas we would all like to believe that blood shortages will never recur after recent events realistically we feel the supply is now even less stable and more unpredictable than before September 11.
	Upon reviewing the draft guidance we, also, have concerns about public implications and the management of public perception that should be addressed.  Our donor groups, organizations as well as our hospital customers have expressed these concerns.  They are related to the underlying principle of geographic deferrals. Specifically as BSE is identified in other parts of the world or in the US is there a plan to extend this principle and how far will this mechanism be extended?
	Will the millions of US citizens who travel abroad be warned of the risk of transfusion in BSE countries, and finally, does the public health benefit warrant the exclusion of 15 million Americans approximately and over 550 million Europeans from US blood donor eligibility?
	These questions and others are concerns from the public as well as the transfusion medicine community and certainly will not be answered easily or today.
	However, we hope there are issues that will be integrated into the future thinking of this group and actions of this group and FDA as guardians of blood safety.
	As a vanguard blood care organization we remain committed to blood safety and the efforts of the FDA and this group. 
	We assure you that we are working diligently to manage this new horizon. However, we hope you, also, recognize the new dynamics introduced by the nation's war on terrorism and how the priorities of the public and the blood care system  continue to evolve day to day.
	Thank you.
	DR. BOLTON:  Thank you, Dr. Jones and finally Colonel Fitzpatrick from the Armed Services Blood Program Office.
	DR. FITZPATRICK: Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. Since we took a turn toward the blood supply, I am going to preface my presentation on vCJD if it is okay. I will stay within my time period.
	We have had questions and discussions with Dr. Nightingale's presentations and the others about the blood supply.  I just want to make a couple of comments.
	Our responsibility is to judiciously recruit, safeguard and guarantee availability of blood, while we are frank and honest with our donors about the need and what happens  to the blood we collect from them.
	After September 11, there has been a huge outpouring of blood donations. As Dr. Jones said, we really don't know what is going to happen in the future. World War II and Korea created a core of lifetime blood donors. Vietnam did not. Most of the blood supplied in Vietnam, actually 95 percent was provided by the military, not by civilian collection agencies and Desert Shield, Desert Storm because of it being a short war did not create a lifetime group of blood donors.
	We now have a different situation. We have a situation in which our homeland has been attacked. We see constant notifications in the press about anthrax and homeland defense, and I will go back to my first statement.
	It is our job as blood suppliers to judiciously recruit and safeguard the blood supply and guarantee availability while being honest with our donors.
	So, that is the challenge that is ahead of us, the blood suppliers. The challenge ahead of you is to not become preoccupied with the availability of the blood supply, the impact on the donors but to provide us, the blood suppliers, the scientific information that the FDA, Health and Human Services, the Red Cross, ABC and ourselves at DOD need to determine who to collect the blood from and what the risk to the blood supply is from this agent, and I would ask that that be what you focus on because we need good valid information to make our determinations.
	I was quoted as saying that the best place to keep blood is in your veins, and I did make that statement at an NCHS meeting, but I would like to, also, say that we, DOD, do maintain a mixed inventory of liquid and frozen blood, and we are in the process of replacing that inventory with new technology which makes it more available and will provide us 14-day dating after we thaw and deglycerolize it because we have to supply blood in places that most people don't. We have to deal with the fact that there have been spot shortages in this country in the past, and we don't always have the influence of an attack on our country to recruit donors, and we have ships at sea and other things that most people don't have to deal with.
	So, in light of that and if we judiciously recruit the best place for the donor to keep the blood until we recruit them and tell them to donate is in their veins, but we want them to respond when we ask them to donate.
	We had a glut of donors in September, and we have continued to have donors. What Dr. Jones was alluding to was that in November and December we don't really know what will happen.
	It is our job and our goal to maintain that supply and be able to deal with that. 
	So, with that I will go on to the next slide here and tell you what we are going to do with CJD. You may heard in the press that we limited access to some of our bases for civilian collection agencies. That was not in response to variant CJD. That was in response to the need to be able to respond quickly and immediately to an increased surge or requirement for blood from our own donor supply.  We operate 21 blood donor centers. We collect about 105,000 units a year, 1 percent of the nation's blood supply, not a lot, but we by maintaining our own program are not subject to those troughs and peaks that Dr. Jones alluded to. We do have our own troughs and peaks, but we try to maintain the ability to respond.
	So, if that comes up I just wanted to clarify why we did that. It was not in response to implementing the variant CJD policy.
	Monday we will implement our guidance which is based on the FDA guidance document that we have worked with the Red Cross, FDA, ABC and HHS over the past, I don't know, 18 months, however, long it has been to come to some conclusion as to where we would be drawing blood within this nation under about the same guidelines for everyone.  That was our goal. 
	Our goal was to have a blood supply that was collected under the same guidelines.  The difference in our implementation between what we have done and what the guidance document for FDA says is that it would, and there was  a question previously about how hard is it to differentiate between north and south of the Alps  and the years 1980 to 1990 and 1980 to 1996. We operate three blood collection programs, each service, the Army, Navy and Air Force operate their own programs under their own FDA license. They have their own QA officers and QA program. Their QA officers came to us and said, "We think this is going to be hard to do."  There is a lot of travel between north of the Alps and south of the Alps. People sometimes rotate between north and south of the Alps. We go on what is called temporary duty. An Air Force individual who is stationed at Ramsdine(?) Air Base in Germany might be stationed temporarily in Italy for a period of time, sometimes 30, 60, 90 days at a time. What we would be asking those people to do is recall back through the years 1980 to 1996 when they were stationed where and how long they spent in those locales, and they try to be honest with us. They really want to be honest with us. What we anticipate would happen is that they would go home, talk to their wife who would  say, "You know, honey, you were TDY down in Italy a lot," and that might have added up to 6 months. In order to alleviate those post-donation callbacks and the quote errors and variances that might result from them and to make it easier for our screening personnel who are not nurses; they are primarily enlisted personnel with medical technician training, a 2-year program of training and a special training in blood banking. They are certainly not novices and they are not untrained. 
	We wanted to keep it as simple as possible for them. Some of you may recall the military tries to keep the KISS principle. So, we combined those two categories and we are deferring anyone who was stationed in Europe from 1980 to 1996 for 6 months or more for simplification in the donor screening process.
	Everything else that we have done conforms with the FDA guidance. We reduced time in the UK from 6 months to 3 months.  There is some question about the 5-year policy. If I was a college student on exchange in France for 4 years, I wasn't a DOD person who spent 6 months. Well, the 5-year thing applies to you, sorry. If you spent 5 years in Europe as a non-DOD affiliated person then you will be deferred, and then after 1996, for those people currently stationed in Europe the 5-year deferral applies to them and that is our policy. If you had been there from January 1, 1997, to January 1, 2002, then you will come under the 5-year deferral program.
	The anticipated loss prior to September 11, was 18 percent. That is still the loss. We know 18 percent of our personnel that are currently on active duty spent at least 6 months or more stationed in Europe. 
	Just as the Red Cross we had a pre-information campaign. We have educated our groups. We have tried to educate our donors. I cannot tell you what the loss will be at the door Monday when they present and how many of them will actually come and present. I know that we have already had complaints from long-time donors as to well I can donate this week, but I won't be able to next week.
	My answer to them is relatively simple. I am one of that group, too.  I have spent 6 months in Europe as most of us old colonels have, and my family is the most upset including my daughters who won't be able to donate until you as an august scientific body can present us with the right information to reinstate them as donors or tell us when we might be able to do that.
	What are our concerns?  Japan is a concern to us because we have a large group of Navy personnel stationed in Japan, Marines and Air Force, not so many Army. Those other nameless Asian countries that might have received bone meal products that we haven't been told about yet are of concern, also, because the Army has a large group of people stationed in Korea.
	Our problem is that once a country comes out on the USDA list as a BSE country our veterinary agency takes action to deal with the food products that are purchased and consumed within that country locally and that raises the question to me as the head of the blood program, well, we cannot use the food anymore; what are you going to do about the blood, and I need some help to do that.
	I need a time frame to work with. So, I would ask that this not be delayed until the next meeting but there be some sort of action taken to help address what time frame we are concerned about here in the importation of bone meal from the UK; what is the risk of BSE transmission to individuals who may have consumed beef in Japan and how do we as a blood collection community deal with those donors?
	So, that is really what I am asking you today about Japan.
	In closing, which I may have gone a minute over, and I apologize, I would like to just reconfirm that what I would appreciate from my standpoint from  this Committee is that you assist us in interpreting the data, however minimal that data may be and that you assist us in applying the precautionary principle that Dr. Epstein talks about so frequently in taking the data available at the moment, applying it to the donor population, allowing us to help interpret that so that we provide a safe blood supply, as safe as possible and ameliorate whatever hypothetical or real risk there may be for the transmission of TSE to a transfusion recipient.
	Thank you.
	DR. BOLTON:  Thank you, Colonel Fitzpatrick.
	I would, also, like to thank you on behalf of the Committee for all of your service and all those in the Armed Forces.
	We now will move to the open public hearing, and I understand we have one person who signed up or requested to speak, that is Kay Gregory, Director of Regulatory Affairs from the American Association of Blood Banks. Is Kay here?
	Very good, Ms. Gregory, you have the floor.
	MS. GREGORY:  Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. I want to clarify that we have actually provided for the Committee three different sets of comments on this guidance document. They relate to different issues and the one that I am specifically going to discuss today is construction of donor questions that should be printed on the questionnaire to decide whether donors should be deferred or not.
	The American Association of Blood Banks is the professional society for over 8000 individuals in blood banking and transfusion medicine. We are the professional association for 2200 institutional members who are involved in all aspects of blood collection and in transfusion services.
	Our members are responsible for virtually all of the blood collected, and more than 80 percent of the blood that is transfused in the United States and in the last 50 years the AABB has maintained an adherence to safety and availability  of the nation's blood supply as our primary concern.
	Today I want to speak on behalf of the AABB interorganizational task force for redesigning the uniform donor history questionnaire and this group is rather widespread. It consists of many different individuals. There are representatives from the blood bank organization. There are liaisons from both the FDA and CDC and the Canadian blood services and we, also, have survey design experts, statisticians and an ethicist who is representing the public on this particular group, and this task force is engaged in an extensive process to redesign and simplify donor questions.
	By way of background the initial step of this project, of this task force was to evaluate the current questions and suggest new wording.
	The new wording would help in focus groups of experienced donors as well as non-donors, and based on that input we made additional changes. 
	We are currently in the process of further evaluation of questions utilizing one-on-one cognitive interviews that are being conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics.
	These questions are on the AABB web site to solicit input from the public as well as from our own members. Blood collection personnel will, also, be asked to review the final document and based on effective feedback from all those sources we may be able to make significant changes, and we view this to be the final product to FDA for their approval.
	I tell you this by way of background because I think many people think that donor questions are very simple to design. All you have to do is figure out what you want to ask them, and I am trying to make the point that that is not the case and particularly not if the questions are going to be validated and donors are going to understand what it is we are trying to ask them with these questions.
	In terms of questionnaire format our simplified questionnaire will have time periods of concern.  So, for example, we will probably have one heading of "Have you ever?" because there are a whole bunch of questions we want to know about, "Have you ever done this?"
	All the questions that we want to know about "Have you ever?" would then fall under that heading.  Another example, the time period that might be used then would be 1980 to 1996. So, from 1980 to 1996, there would be a series of questions that would apply  to that time frame.
	This type format is supported by the survey design specialist and was also proposed and discussed at the October 2000 joint FDA, AABB workshop to redesign the donor history questionnaire, and we want to take this opportunity to comment on this aspect of the draft guidance that we are discussing today.
	During that 18 months we have conducted focus groups to, as I said, evaluate the current questions that were already approved by the FDA. We then modified the questions based on this focus group feedback.  The alternative wording that we are now proposing for this particular guidance on CJD and vCJD is based almost exclusively on these previously obtained focus group data.
	When focus group data were not available for a specific question the survey design specialist on the task force provided the requisite expertise for developing some new wording.  
	The task force has now conducted focus groups to compare the questions that were proposed by the FDA in  the guidance with the wording that the task force proposals in our comments to the guidance. 
	Unfortunately, we have just completed those focus groups. So, all we have is a very quick look at raw data, and I cannot provide you any details on what the focus groups said other than it is very clear that the focus groups preferred the more simplified language that the task force has suggested.
	However, there are some concerns even with our simplified language and they have made some suggestions which we will be looking at and we will be submitting a second set of comments to the FDA as quickly as possible that we now would like to change the wording that we have even proposed.
	It is important that in these focus groups that we did we did include military personnel. Thanks to some help from our military representative on this particular task force we were able to find military personnel to try these questions out on, and to say that they were confused is being, I would be understating completely.
	By way of example I just want to review one question. You have in your comments all of the questions and our suggestions, and I just want to take one as an example, and it isn't even one that is related to variant CJD. It is one that is related to CJD, but the proposed question and actually the one we have been using all along is have you or any of your blood relatives had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or have you ever been told that your family is at an increased risk for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
	Now, think about their hearing this because that is the way many donor interviews are going and if they don't hear it, they are reading it. So, they are reading Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and missing perhaps some of what we are really after.
	So, the proposal from the task force is to make a very simple question. Have any of your relatives had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease?  The rationale for this is that we know from our focus groups that they do not like compound questions. They don't want to be asked two or three things in the same question. They don't care if you have to increase the number of questions that we ask just so throw out the four things in the same questions because by the time I get to the end I have forgotten what the first thing was that you asked me.
	The crux of this question if  you think about it is really family history or risk of CJD, and we think that the simplified language will elicit that information. Eliminating the part of the question that asks whether the donor has CJD will reduce the number of false-positive responses that would ultimately defer a donor unnecessarily.
	If the donor had undiagnosed CJD they would answer no because they wouldn't know about it. Further if they did have diagnosed CJD they would be extremely unlikely to appear as a prospective donor and would most certainly be symptomatic and deferred on that basis even if they did happen to come in.
	In closing what I would like you to understand is that designing donor questions is not a simple matter of getting a couple of people and sitting around the table and saying, "Why don't we ask this and ask everything we need to ask about all in one question?"
	Donors must understand the questions so that they can answer appropriately and the questions will clearly distinguish and accurately  distinguish those who should be deferred from those who are merely confused by the question.
	The wording of these questions, particularly the CJD, vCJD questions must be carefully considered because they may have significant impact on the kind of donor deferrals that we see.
	Thank you.    
	DR. BOLTON:  Thank you, Ms. Gregory. I am sure that the FDA values your assistance in clarifying the construction of these questions.
	Is there anyone in the audience who would like to make a presentation during the open public hearing?
	Okay, I see no volunteers.  So, at this time I think we will move on to the Committee discussion. What is our time frame?  Well, we have 2 minutes for discussion. So, everybody speak quickly. We will run on a little bit longer and delay the break a bit, but I think we should open the Committee discussion now to address the issues presented by our four speakers on the update as well as the last part of Dr. Nightingale's presentation on the DHHS meeting.
	Questions or comments?
	Dr. Belay?
	DR. BELAY:  I would like to have some clarifications. So, I have several questions. The first question is to Colonel Fitzpatrick. It is not clear to me whether or not your deferral  policy regarding variant CJD is different from the recommendations of the FDA. Do you have any differences in the deferral policy?
	DR. FITZPATRICK: The only difference we have is that we did not make the differentiation between north and south of the Alps and so an individual, right now an individual per FDA guidance if you were stationed in Germany after 1990, you could donate blood because we know very factually that the defense commissary agency who purchased beef from the United Kingdom quit purchasing beef at the end of 1990, and that was actually congressional legislation, totally unrelated to BSE, but it required the importation of US beef only to military installations north of the Alps.
	South of the Alps beef purchases from the United Kingdom continued, and individuals stationed south of the Alps up until 1996, could have been consuming beef purchased from the UK. So, that is why the FDA came up with in their guidance the differentiation between people stationed north of the Alps and south of the Alps and the two different time periods.
	Based on the input from our quality assurance officers in the three services we extended the period north of the Alps essentially rather than stopping at 1990 for that deferral period. We extended it to 1996 so that anyone stationed in Europe during the period 1980 to 1996, is deferred not because they were consuming beef from the UK in Germany after that but because of the issues I raised about postdonation information, the fact that Kay brought up that the questions are very confusing. Trying to differentiate that is difficult and we have a good bit of travel between people stationed north of the Alps and south of the Alps back and forth during those time periods, and it would require them to try to accumulate from memory the time they spent in each geographic area and we just felt that was too difficult.
	So, we are in complete compliance with the guidance and we are more conservative during that time frame 1990 to 1996 for people that were stationed north of the Alps.
	DR. CRAWFORD: Actually with respect to the Japan question as I am sure the colonel knows the Government of Japan issued a statement early this week saying that the herd in question that produced the positive BSE case did not receive any meat and bone meal of European, of British origin and rather that the meat and bone meal came from Taiwan and perhaps some other Asian nations.
	I suspect this does nothing more than complicate your risk assessment that has to be done because I would suspect that there is a trans-shipment problem so that meat and bone meal was shipped first to Taiwan or somewhere else and then shipped to Japan, but it is a very, very complicated issue.  It is going to require some kind of free-wheeling risk assessment, and in the current of the decision I would like to talk to you a little more about that.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  Kind of following up on that how much does the military in the Pacific buy beef from Japan? It seems like beef in Japan is very expensive. I am sure you wouldn't do that or do you get your beef from Korea or from Southeast Asia to feed the troops and when would the troops actually come in contact with a very small number of cattle that are infected so far?  We don't even know if it is the variant CJD or the variant strain of BSE in Great Britain. There is a natural BSE in cattle to begin with.
	DR. FITZPATRICK: I am not the best person to answer specifics. I can give you generalities. The commissary agency is actually run by the veterinary department because they do the food inspection, but as far as purchasing local product most of our consumers prefer just as you, fresh beef or fresh product and the commissary agency tries to meet the consumer's request.  So, there are agreements with most of the host nations that we have bases at to procure fresh vegetables, fresh meat, those sorts of things for purchase by our personnel so that they have them available to eat. So as far as specifics in Japan as to how many pounds and all that we had that information for your -- we can find that information for Japan.
	There is, also, eating on the economy, having been an old colonel and stationed most everyplace in the world by now, I was stationed in Korea. I visited Japan frequently. I can tell you that most of the focal points of our, most of our people are stationed on Okinawa. Beef consumption in Okinawa is different from beef consumption in mainland Japan, and the Kobe beef steakhouses are the favorite place for people to go out to eat. So, they were eating it even if they didn't buy it from the commissary, they were eating beef on the local economy while they were  stationed there.
	So, that is about the most specifics I can give you on that right now.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  It seems like Kobe beef or certainly Kobe steak should not be infected and again we don't even know the extent of the disease of BSE in the country to even begin to assess the effects on the individual. Certainly 35 percent of their consumption of beef probably didn't come from the local area as it did in Europe from Great Britain.
	DR. FITZPATRICK: Right, and again I don't know.  It could actually be higher because to ship beef from the US overseas it has to be flash frozen. It is shipped as either a quarter or whole carcasses. I have been doing a lot  of work with the vets lately. So, I know a lot of this stuff, and it is expensive to ship and maintain and provide. So, in many cases it is actually cheaper to buy the product locally than to ship it there.
	DR. BOLTON:  Dr. Cliver and then Dr. McCullough.
	DR. CLIVER: By chance I spent last week in Japan, and was aghast to learn that on 3 or 4 days' notice it was implemented that every slaughtered animal, bovine from veal calves on up has to have its brain tested before the carcass can be released for human consumption.
	One, I think that is not a particularly wise use of resources but second, I think the flash implementation was probably ill advised because my own laboratory is getting involved with some of this stuff, and getting the laboratory to do valid tests entails some training and some phasing in, that time has not permitted there.
	Having said that though one thing I didn't ask that I should have is until now what were the carcass fabrication regulations that were in place in Japan, were there rigorous efforts to exclude CNS tissue from what got sold as edible carcass. I have a fair idea of how we are going at that in the United States but whether anything comparable has been in place in Japan I cannot say.
	I do think that there is a distinct possibility that that animal was a sporadic case even though some of my colleagues mightn't agree that such wold even exist. Beyond that it is important that we know whether this is a critical control point in the sense of our hazard analysis, critical control point safety system. Can we keep CNS tissue out of beef there or here and finally, if we are going to be testing how much safety does that actually impart from the consumer's point of view because the amount of resources given the Japanese economy is in trouble, the amount of resources that are being devoted to that probably are canceling most other food safety things that they have had in place in recent times, and those other food safety measures I submit will probably save more lives than 100 percent BSE testing, but then back to the concerns of the military, I think the key question is how have the Japanese been processing carcasses ever since we recognized the BSE threat earlier in the nineties.  Have they been taking rigorous steps to exclude central nervous system tissue from the portions that are sold or not?
	DR. BOLTON:  Dr. McCullough?
	DR. MC CULLOUGH:  This is a question for either Dr. Bianco, Ms. Fredrick or Dr. Jones. 
	When this group originally recommended the BSE deferrals and voted in favor of the FDA's proposal there was and there has always been a great concern about the impact on blood donors. The events of the last 6 weeks have created a wholly different environment and on the one hand there are enormous numbers of donors that have appeared. On the other hand we are hearing that the history of  this sort of thing is that these don't necessarily turn out to be good long-term donors and that there may be other reasons, public image and things that this may backfire to some extent.
	So, are there specific steps that you all are thinking about that might address the responses of the last 6 weeks and how that may impact the loss of donors that will occur from these new criteria?
	DR. JONES: I mentioned in my brief comments that we have engaged new initiatives to contact these donors, the ones who were either first-time donors who came and were collected or donors who were turned away because we obviously knew the medical need was not going to be that great and this has gone through telemarketing and letters and focus groups and all kinds of things that we can come up with from a marketing point of view to try to make sure we maintain as many of those donors as possible.
	My understanding though this has sort of been, as this has happened before, a lot of these efforts have not been so successful. We are confident that it will be successful, of course, but we will have to see what happens.
	MS. FREDRICK: Likewise, I think. We have had almost 1.3 million people contact us within the first 4 weeks of this.  Those are donors as well as potential donors, and we are now in the process of literally contacting every one of the individuals who contacted us, either through our 800 number or Internet or showed up at a blood drive and putting all those people in the database and we have now an active program that will go out 2 years in terms of telemarketing and direct mail to bring these donors back in. 
	I would, also, say that we are not anticipating a collapse in the blood supply in November and December and January. Essentially we have fully booked our calendar at least through January. We know that the blood supply today will carry us through the Christmas holidays at the very least.
	I would, also, say, Jeff because of our planning we are not seeing the loss of donors that we anticipated. Either the initial numbers of the FDA 8 to 9 percent, our own survey said, "Three percent, maybe another 1 percent," I mean we are seeing very, very low numbers of people showing up that we have to defer on site.
	DR. BIANCO: My comments for America's Blood  Centers are  similar to Dr.Jones and Jackie.  Certainly the outpouring of blood donors was very important. What we are trying to do is we have created what we call a member donation initiative. We have hired consultants. We have run focus groups and we are trying to reach the segment, the part of those numbers to focus on them, those that are more likely to donate again and become repeat donors, and we are putting a tremendous effort into that.
	The other point was very important. I should just tell you as a matter of curiosity, Jackie, we received 1.2 million calls to the 800 number.  ABC, each member center has their own local numbers and 800 numbers but the national number had 1 million calls and we paid $56,000 in our phone bill for September just for that 800 number. So, I think that our challenge is to focus on these donors and maybe recreate what we had with World War II as a continuing set of donors that will keep our blood supply as we need it, and I hope we will be able to do it even in the face of the deferrals.  Certainly the outpouring of donations gave us relief and gave us a new opportunity, a new donor base or a new potential donor base that we can try to draw upon.
	Thank you.
	DR. JONES:  Why don't I just make one last comment?  Relative to what Jackie said we, also, have very strong bookings for our blood drives going out into January, but what is really key is what we call the efficiencies, and  that is when the people actually show up for those drives, and unfortunately the last two or three days we are starting to see some erosion of our efficiencies which had been riding very, very high, 100 to 110 percent and they are now starting to fall off. Whether that is the beginnings of something we don't know, but that is the parameter that is probably more important for the supply than the actual bookings.
	DR. BOLTON:  Just to make a comment from Colonel Fitzpatrick, with respect to the Japanese situation it is important I think for us to remember that in the UK there were approximately 180,000 confirmed cases of BSE and possibly 800,000 to 1,000,000 potentially infected animals. I forget what the number is that was estimated that may have been of the human food supply, but it was quite significant. So, while two cases of BSE in Japan is clearly a red flag and raises concern, it certainly should not be thought of as on the same level of magnitude as that in the UK. I, also, would hope that both the Japanese and the other Asian nations have learned by the mistakes that were made in the UK in terms of the sourcing of beef for the human food supply and other regulations. Of course, there is no guaranty that that will occur, but I think that we have not yet reached that sort of level of concern for Japan.
	DR. FITZPATRICK: And if you will note from our implementation policy by implementing the FDA guidance we are trying to take into account and conform with what is the theoretical risk as identified by the Committee and the FDA. So, the 5-year deferral follows. We are implementing that same deferral ban criteria and I would hope that at most Japan would follow the same criteria if there is a recommendation for deferral.  So, I am not suggesting that we would immediately defer for Japan although we have based our deferral policy in looking at how the FDA guidance was written on the USDA list, and we have the conflicting issue of once a country is on the FDA list now our personnel stationed in that country, our veterinary folks and our commissary agencies are now dealing with the fact that just as they cannot procure beef locally in Europe and Britain we have the same problem in Japan and now we have a precedent set which was okay, that happened in Europe, and you said that I cannot donate blood. Now, it is happening in Japan, how come I can still donate blood, and that is the difference we are going to have to grapple with and try to explain.
	DR. BOLTON:  I think there may be an educational issue there, but this is certainly a complicated issue and I think that we can look out into the future with some reasonable certainty that Japan will not be the only Asian country that will report a BSE case. I guess we could expect that probably Korea and many other countries will begin to report cases or will have cases perhaps that don't go reported, and as I have spoken with Dr. Asher in the FDA about this, this presents somewhat of a moving target for this Committee in terms of evaluating information and also for the FDA in terms of devising guidance, and I guess all we can do is our best effort to evaluate the data as it accumulates and to make recommendations as best we can.
	Dr. Roos?
	DR. ROOS:  I wondered whether the American Red Cross representative would just clarify for me the differences between their guidelines and the present guidelines of the FDA.
	MS. FREDRICK:  I might have to call on the FDA to clarify their guidelines.  We are doing UK for 3 months from 1980 to present. We are not stopping in 1996. So, we are continuing forward. Probably the biggest difference is we are doing Europe for 6 months cumulative time from 1980 to present and I think FDA's guidance is France for 5 years by May and then all of Europe in October for 5 years.
	The military piece isn't an issue for us because of our 6-month deferral. We don't have to deal with that, and so we have a very simple question. Have you traveled outside the United States since 1980?
	DR. ROOS: I guess the reason I bring this up is that there must be some confusion I would guess and maybe tension in blood banks that have donors, donations from American Red Cross and donations that are non-American Red Cross blood, and so, individuals that they might be administering a transfusion of blood that satisfied the criteria of the FDA but not the American Red Cross and I think that is an issue and it is one that I could see might be troubling to the transfusion recipient as well as the blood bank itself and I just guess I was interested maybe in American Red Cross' comments here and maybe FDA just because I think there are tensions related to that.
	Now, I am sure that there are instances in which medical and lay group come up with guidelines that might differ from the FDA saying that a priori that should not be, is not appropriate in given circumstances. This particular one I guess both of these guidelines are based on predictions of safety versus availability of the product and maybe they are using pretty much the same data and so forth and for that reason I guess I would have hoped that there could have been some agreement in order to decrease confusion and maybe those tensions.
	DR. BOLTON:  Could we get a comment from the FDA on that?
	DR. SCOTT:  I just want to make the point that it is certainly permitted for blood establishments to have more restrictive criteria than FDA recommends, and I think that we all tried to come to some kind of agreement on this, and we have differences of opinion in particular about the effects on supply, and that you may wish to comment further but we just haven't been able to come to a position that we can easily agree upon.
	MS. FREDRICK: Yes, if I can address the first, now, we have only been doing this for about a week, but this has been the smoothest implementation of a new policy that I can recall and to my knowledge there have not been any major donor issues in terms of their confusion, quite the contrary because I think we have gone to great lengths in educating the donors.
	The other thing I would offer, and I don't know, maybe Jeff McCullough knows the data. The Red Cross for another issue entirely back I think in the seventies or eighties, Bill Sherwood had done a study on how many donors actually cross over with even the Red Cross system, donate in Madison and donate in St. Paul for entirely another reason and as I recall the data is extremely small in terms of the number of donors who actually go through and donate at two places. So, I am not sure that this is really an issue for donors.
	I think the other thing is we have been for decades working with different blood donation records. So, when I go into New York Blood Center, for instance, they have a totally different form in many ways that I go through then when I go down to Philadelphia. 
	We have had differences; for instance, recently we have just reviewed our antibiotic deferrals and blood centers differing in cancer and antibiotics. At the very least we have to meet FDA agreements but generally there has not been confusion with donors.
	DR. FITZPATRICK: I am in the somewhat unique position of running both the recipient and the donor side of the house. We run transfusion services at 121 facilities and we collect the blood for those transfusion services.  Our dilemma prior to your last meeting was whose guidance were we going to follow because there was such a wide disparity between what was being implemented by the Red Cross and what was the recommendation from the Committee and the FDA.
	We worked I think diligently and hard with all organizations to try to facilitate and help come to a single criterion, but it was actually Dr. Williams and the FDA who brought the information to the table that we needed to allow us to be able to tell our recipients and our donors that we were following what we felt the safest criteria for them because I have not only a medical but a political factor I have to answer to, and that was when using, say modeling methods the Red Cross criteria were evaluated and the FDA guidance document was evaluated and depending on where you round the figures there is a 1 to 3 percent difference in the reduction of the theoretical risk in following either FDA or ARC's criteria.
	That very eloquent presentation and your recommendations allowed me to go to my political bosses and say that we can implement the FDA criteria even though there is a difference between that and the Red Cross and the fact that over 45 percent of the blood being collected is collected under different criteria and that we can tell our patients in our facilities that sometimes we don't meet all our requirements and we have to get blood from a civilian agency, and that could be an ABC agency or it could be a Red Cross agency.
	Everyone is following the criteria to reduce the theoretical risk as much as possible given their interpretation of the impact on supply, and that was acceptable to both our hospitals and our political and our medical consultants and only time will tell the result of that, but that is where we were and that is how we got to where we got to.
	DR. BOLTON:  Dr. Bianco, do you have something that is dramatically different than what has already been said?
	DR. BIANCO: It is not dramatic, but it is different.
	DR. BOLTON:  Keep it brief.
	DR. BIANCO: I want to thank Dr. Roos for raising that very important question. The second thing, the issue is not so much the confusion of donors. There is an issue of decision making process. Those are public health decisions. I think that what has been established here by this Committee, by FDA, those numbers were achieved in the studies that were done before in the modeling that showed that adding from 6 months to 5 years made very little difference. So, this was a reaction to the decision-making process.  I wish we would all be able to follow the same rational decision-making process and have a single criteria  for a major public health issue.
	Thank you.
	DR. BOLTON:  I guess I will wrap up the discussion by saying that I agree. I think it would be nice to have a uniform set of criteria for this, but I think that the two sets of criteria can co-exist, and the fact that these criteria probably will evolve over time, it is not a disastrous circumstance to have these slightly out of phase and so I hope that we can continue to have a safe and adequate blood supply going forward even with these different sets of criteria.
	What I would like to do now is take our break. It is now, I have ten-forty-eight. Let us round it to ten-fifty, a 10-minute break. Come back at 11 o'clock and begin our Topic 2 only one-half hour late.
	So, I will see you back here at 11 o'clock.
	Thank you.
	DR. FREAS: If you are speakers for the morning's agenda and you would like to get your slides, would you please to the audiovisual booth?
	Thank you.
	(Brief recess.)
	DR. BOLTON:  Sheila Longford has asked me to let the FDA panel members know that there is a special table set up in the restaurant for us. So, as you enter the restaurant just identify yourself as an FDA TSE Advisory Committee member and they will usher you to the special table which is not serving Kobe beef.
	We are beginning Topic 2, discussion of the amino acid sourcing and production and the theoretical risk of transmission of the BSE agent through their use in biopharmaceutical products.
	Our first speaker is going to provide an introduction overview and that is Dr. Gerald Feldman form OTRR and CBER.
	Dr. Feldman?
	DR. FELDMAN:  Good morning. I am Gerald Feldman from the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, and I would like to thank the members of the Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies Advisory Committee, the speakers and the audience for participating in this section of this morning's TSE Advisory Committee meeting.
	This meeting of the TSE Advisory Committee continues the agency's process of assuring the safety of FDA regulated products with regard to the risk to the public health posed by transmissible spongiform encephalopathies.
	The potential for contamination of biological products with the agent that causes bovine spongiform encephalopathies  or BSE has been a concern of the Center for Biologics of the USFDA for many years.
	In 1990, FDA intensified its review of new product applications for human medical products derived from or containing bovine sources.
	FDA recommended to manufacturers of these new products that they not purchase as components animal tissues or products that originated in a country where native cattle had been diagnosed with BSE.
	In 1993, and again in 1996, FDA issued letters to the manufacturers of drugs, biologics and medical devices advising them that in the manufacture of FDA regulated products intended for human use they should not use materials derived from cattle born, raised or slaughtered in countries where BSE is known to exist. Again, in 2000, CBER reissued the same advice to vaccine and other biological manufacturers regarding bovine materials from countries having or at serious risk of having BSE.
	In recent years the TSE Advisory Committee has reviewed the relative risks of several processed components. For example both tallow and gelatin have been subjects of advisory committee review.
	In 1997, the TSE Advisory Committee recommended that no bovine-derived material from a country with BSE be a source for gelatin used injectable, implantable or ophthalmic products.
	The Committee further recommended that for oral and topical use safe sourcing of gelatin be implemented. When manufacturers were asked to identify all animal drug components used in their manufacturing processes most manufacturers took into consideration process components such as gelatin and tallow, but very few considered amino acids which are the building blocks of all protein.
	In this meeting we will focus our attention on amino acids which like gelatin and tallow are processed ingredients. Unlike gelatin and tallow, however amino acids have never been discussed in an open forum and very little has been publicly presented regarding the manufacturing of the product or product polycontrols involved in their production.
	In considering the safety of any bovine drug component three things must be taken into consideration, its method of production, the sources of raw materials used and its ultimate use.
	Generally speaking there are three methods of production of amino acids as listed here. There is microbial fermentation, chemical synthesis and either chemical or enzymatic hydrolysis and there are many possible sources of tissue as listed here. You can have vegetal proteins which are the source of the raw materials or animal proteins either avian feathers or various mammalian tissues.
	FDA has not conducted a rigorous assessment of the manufacturing process for amino acids and therefore has not considered whether or not these ingredients can be subject to a different level of control than we currently have.
	One purpose of this meeting is to obtain information about the sourcing of raw materials, the range of manufacturing processes and the dynamics of the market in order to better assess product safety and to consider adequate and appropriate controls for domestic and imported products.
	Amino acids can be used in a variety of ways in the pharmaceutical industry. Broadly categorized they fall into these three areas. They can be used as active ingredients, as excipients or as reagents.
	Amino acids are considered active ingredients when they comprise the drug itself. These can be oral dosage forms of a purified amino acid or infusion bags or bottles containing large volumes of amino acids and/or electrolytes for nutritive or reconstitutive purposes.
	However, when used as active ingredients amino acids are regulated by the Center for Drugs and specifically for amino acids used in this way the Center for Drugs has implemented a strict policy which subjects amino acids to the guidance issued by the agency for other high-risk bovine-derived materials, namely the materials that come from cattle born or raised or slaughtered in countries where BSE is known or thought to exist, cannot be used in the manufacture of FDA-regulated drugs intended to be used by humans or animals and thus in accordance with this 1996 FDA policy there are no bovine-derived amino acids from BSE countries used as an active ingredient.
	However, in this context there are no restrictions on other ruminant sources or from animals that come from non-BSE countries. 
	Amino acids can, also, be used as excipients added to the final preparation for a variety of purposes such as providing a buffering salt for a particular pH or as a stabilizing agent to prevent the degradation or oxidation of the active substance and finally, amino acids can serve as reagents in the production of the final product. Thus, they can serve as buffers used to purify the active drug component or as components involved in the synthesis of the final product, either by chemical means such as peptide synthesis or by biological means as components in the culture media used to make biopharmaceuticals such as recombinant DNA derived drugs, vaccines or cellular therapies.
	For use as excipients and reagents there are clearly no restrictions on the source of amino acids. Furthermore there is little published or public information regarding the materials from which amino acids are derived commercially or the processes used to manufacture and purify them.
	At issue is the potential contamination with the BSE agent of bovine-derived source material used in the manufacture of US licensed biopharmaceutical products and possible exposure of product excipients that might result through the use of amino acids of bovine origin if these were obtained from animals infected with the BSE agent.
	When contacted for information on the source of the amino acids used many pharmaceutical companies initially responded with surprise that amino acids were considered to be animal derived.  More often than not they could not determine the source of amino acids used referring us instead to the suppliers of raw materials or growth media.
	Some pharmaceutical companies felt that our requests were misplaced since of course, amino acids are considered safe. After all they are isolated by acidic enzymatic hydrolysis of proteins and are subsequently purified by chromatographic methods or they are subject to a multitude of chemical reactions and purification steps as it goes from the raw material to the final product.
	When suppliers were directly contacted for information regarding their sources of amino acids the responses demonstrated the complexity of the market. As illustrated by these few examples, amino acids can be obtained from multiple manufacturers and manufacturers could have multiple methods of production for the same amino acid. 	In most cases the supplier had no further information beyond what is listed here, the company or companies from which the amino acids were purchased and whether or not they were known to be animal derived with no information regarding the type or source of the animal, and so, we contacted the manufacturers of the amino acids themselves, and when they were contacted directly the agency received conflicting information on what raw materials were used and from where they were sourced.
	Because methods of production and the sources of raw materials are so varied and uncertain representatives from two of the larger manufacturers of amino acids accepted our invitation to present descriptions of their manufacturing processes and will hopefully provide further information on the production and purification of amino acids.
	After their presentations we ask that the TSE Advisory Committee consider the safety of amino acids produced from ruminant-derived materials from BSE and BSE-risk countries with regard to the likelihood of transmission of the BSE agent. 
	We, also, ask that the Committee consider the appropriate precautions that should be taken regarding the use of ruminant-derived amino acids in the manufacture of biopharmaceutical products and finally we ask the Committee to consider the potential risks and possible actions to be taken with regard to licensed, approved or investigational products that may be affected, and so we have provided the Committee with three specific questions to focus on.
	One, does the Committee think that the current manufacturing and processing control methods utilized by the manufacturers of amino acids minimize the risk to allow bovine-derived amino acids from BSE countries to be used as reagents and excipients for the production of pharmaceutical products?
	Two, if not, does the Committee feel that there are any circumstances where the risk/benefit ratio would still be in favor of a subject receiving a product where suspect amino acids have been used in its manufacturing process?
	And finally, if not, does the Committee think that the current manufacturing process and control methods utilized by the manufacturers of amino acids minimize the risk to allow other ruminant-derived amino acids from BSE countries to be used as reagents and excipients for the production of pharmaceutical products?
	And with that I would like to end and open it up to any questions and thank you very much.
	DR. BOLTON:  Was it intentional that you left off Question No. 4?  It is in our handout.
	DR. FELDMAN: It is in your handout but the presentation that I provided just now was modified as of 9 o'clock this morning. So, there have been a few changes since the handout was made. We purposely left out the fourth question, but the Committee is welcome to bring it up if it feels it is important.
	DR. BOLTON:  Okay, Peter?
	DR. LURIE: If I understand correctly you are interested in the Committee's comments, questions in response to questions regarding the reagents and excipients, is that correct?
	DR. FELDMAN:  That is what we are interested in now. If you wish to consider the use of amino acids as active ingredients or feed additives or whatever else, we would be very interested, but the questions we put forth to you now are exclusively on excipients and reagents. That is one of the main problems that we are facing now in the Center for Biologics.
	DR. LURIE:  I guess one reason for that as opposed to looking at the active ingredients themselves is the assumption that the companies are complying with the various guidances that the FDA has put out. Is that right?
	DR. FELDMAN: For active --
	DR. LURIE:  For active ingredients.
	DR. FELDMAN: Yes, they are. The Center for Drugs requires that a manufacturer provide a master file for each amino acid that it produces that is used as an active substance, and that master file goes into great detail regarding the manufacturing process. Those countries, the sites of those countries are visited on a supposedly biannual basis by our inspectors to assure that the process is according to the master file. So, I believe that the Center for Drugs is assured that everything is kosher under those circumstances.
	DR. LURIE:  The reason, obviously, you asked us this because we have been through all this with vaccines before and so the reason is that things were not kosher and so, am I correct in understanding then that FDA believes that things are, you know, whatever words, adequately clear with regard to active ingredients that that has not been brought up in the way that it was for vaccines?
	DR. FELDMAN:  I don't want to speak for the Center for Drugs and I don't know if there is a representative from CDER here. I was assured that there would be, but I was assured by representatives from CDER that there is only microbial fermentation processed amino acids or chemical synthesis derived amino acids used as active drug substance. That was an assurance by the Center for Drugs, but again, that was to me. I would rather that you hear that from them rather than me.
	DR. BOLTON:  Is there a CDER member here to provide us that information?
	DR. WU:    Yes, I am from CDER.
	DR. BOLTON:  Please come to the microphone and identify yourself?
	DR. WU:  I am from CDER and the information we are going to be declaring in follow-up to the DNA mechanisms. So far the only animal sources we have encountered is coming from across countries. So, we follow up that to prevent the animal sources from being used and selecting ingredients to deal with mechanisms.
	DR. FELDMAN:  I should point out that that is Dr. Wu from  the Center for Drugs.
	DR. BOLTON:  Thank you. Dr. Roos?
	DR. ROOS:  Maybe I need some clarification here. So, you are talking about vaccines, is that right?
	DR. WU:  Drugs.
	DR. ROOS:  So, let me just follow-up I guess on Peter's question with respect to vaccines and  what their status is with respect to the use of amino acids that might  be bovine derived either as excipients or as reagents and what the status is now as well as FDA guidelines.
	DR. FELDMAN:  Dr. Egan, would you like to address that question?
	DR. EGAN(?): Do you want to know currently the guidance with regard to amino acids? Is that your question, Jerry?
	DR. FELDMAN: Yes, it is not my question, but --
	DR. BOLTON:  It is Dr. Roos' question for vaccine production as reagents really cell culture reagents I assume.
	DR. EGAN:  There has been no explicit guidance either with regard to amino acids used for the manufacture of vaccines either as excipients or as reagents used in culture media.
	When we had the meeting that Dr. Lurie is referring to a year ago we had said that at that time we were not considering as high risk the amino acids that had been used in production.
	DR. BOLTON:  I just want to comment. I think that is really why we are discussing the topic here today is because potentially animal-derived amino acids may be used as either excipients or reagents in many products but especially vaccines and so now I think we need to have the presentations to find out how these products are produced and what the possible risk might be if the tissues themselves were sourced from bovine materials from BSE countries or other ruminants.
	DR. ROOS: Just to follow up I thought there had been some recommendation to exclude all bovine-derived products from vaccines. Am I wrong about that?
	DR. EGAN:  All bovine products from BSE countries, yes, that is correct but you know we have a number of issues, for example, where we have working seeds, viral seeds or bacterial seeds or sow bags that in the past had been using these materials and what to do with those and that would still be an issue.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  I guess I need some clarification and perhaps we will learn a little bit more about it. What is the percent protein contamination in amino acid, in purified amino acids?
	DR. FELDMAN:  We don't know which is one of the reasons for having this as a topic for the Advisory Committee.  Amino acids that are used as active drug substance are very well identified and characterized but we are not talking about those. We are talking about all the other amino acids that are used as excipients and reagents that are not made through that method and do not undergo FDA scrutiny if you will through a master file which is why we wanted this information and these data presented before  you and before us.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  Usually reagents we get from Cigma(?) or anyone else tells us  the percent of contaminants. What is the percent of contaminant of a protein in an amino acid, a pure amino acid or slurry of amino acid preparation; are there actual peptides or proteins there and your acid hydrolysis system, does it break down even proteins such a prion protein to a single amino acid?
	DR. BOLTON:  I think the purpose of the following presentations is to clarify those issues as much as possible. So, I think Susan, if you have a question that is not related to that --
	DR. LEITMAN:  I just have a clarification. There is no restriction on use of CNS tissue or MRN in the production of amino acids? I don't understand what the source or what part of the cow they come from.
	DR. FELDMAN:  Hopefully we will learn that as well in the next couple of presentations.  Anecdotal evidence or anecdotal data provided to the FDA suggests that tissue sources could be bone, fat, hide, hair, those types of tissues but that was anecdotal and this was information provided to us by other companies who got it from their suppliers who got it from the manufacturers but we have no firm data suggesting one tissue over another.
	DR. BOLTON:  So, I guess for my edification there is a difference here between what is used by the industry and what is permitted to be used by FDA, and so I guess the question is if you are looking at, well, the first issue is are bovine tissues or other ruminant tissues of any sort allowed to be used from countries where BSE has occurred and two, for any animal are there any restricted tissues vis-a-vis bovine, sheep, whatever say, sourced outside of BSE countries?
	DR. FELDMAN: That is correct and I would, also,  go so far as to say that there --
	DR. BOLTON:  That was a question.  It can't be correct. It was a question.
	DR. FELDMAN: And you want a yes or no answer?
	DR. BOLTON:  Yes, I would like some sort of an answer. Are there restrictions for sourcing bovine tissues for hydrolysis to amino acids in countries where BSE has occurred?
	DR. FELDMAN: As of right now I don't believe so, not for amino acids used as anything except for active drug substance.
	DR. BOLTON:  Okay, and are there restrictions on CNS tissues from animals sourced anywhere?
	DR. FELDMAN: I don't know of any.
	DR. BOLTON:  Okay, so that establishes the playing field on which we are operating.
	DR. FERGUSON:  May I just clarify one point and perhaps I am misunderstanding your question but if I understand your question you are asking are there restrictions in place in BSE-affected countries on what tissues might be used and I think in Europe the answer to that question would probably have to be yes, that tissues defined as specified risk materials are mandated to be incinerated. They cannot be used for food, feed, drug, whatever. They go right to the incinerator.
	DR. FELDMAN:  So, that would apply to your other tissue but not to hide or fat or bone?
	DR. FERGUSON:  Correct.  That wouldn't apply to those tissues defined as specified risk materials which is essentially the CNS tissue, intestines, spleen, depending on the definition you use.
	DR. BOLTON:  Okay, so if I can summarize I think what we might have here are tissues of any type in say the US that might be hydrolyzed to produce amino acids and non-CNS tissues, non-risk tissues that might be obtained in EU for example and hydrolyzed to amino acids that then could be imported into this country and used as either excipients or reagents. Is that correct?
	DR. FELDMAN:  That is correct.
	DR. BOLTON:  Okay, so now  we know what we are thinking about in terms of the overall risk and the products.  Yes, Ray?
	DR. ROOS:  Your question was are there restrictions at present for amino acids that would be bovine derived from BSE countries, and the answer I think was no at present. That was your question, and that was the answer?
	DR. BOLTON:  Yes, the tissue in a country in which BSE has occurred, could tissue be obtained there, hydrolyzed to amino acids and imported into this country, and I think the answer is yes, but not from high-risk tissue.
	DR. ROOS: So, I think this touches on the whole vaccine issue again, and whether in fact the guidelines that were suggested with respect to the use of amino acids from bovine products of BSE countries, whether that was a restriction, and maybe we could come back to that.
	DR. EGAN:  There is probably a lot of uncertainty here, but I think the guidance that has gone out from CBER and from FDA is that bovine-derived materials from BSE countries not be used in the production of products regulated by FDA by CBER, and that would include or should include amino acids.
	I guess we run into some of the problems, and again, if I can come back to the vaccines what do you do about some products where those amino acids had been used, for example, where it is uncertain what the source was, if it had been produced, used in say culture for a cell bank or for you know, viral or bacterial seed, either the master seed or the working seed or what to do with products, let us say that were made using the bovine material, amino acids from a European country before that country was put on the list, what to do with those materials and I guess we, also, need to consider the issue of amino acids per se, even if they were to come from, you know, from a European source, from Europe, do they need to be excluded. I mean there has been an exclusion for tallow derivatives.  That exists.  Are amino acids more or less of a risk than that?
	DR. BOLTON:  I think my recollection is that the issue of the cell stocks was dealt with at a previous meeting and that the master cell lines, the master cell banks were  to be excluded or accepted as is. Working cell lines would then be produced under these restrictive conditions going forward.
	I believe that the existing lots of vaccine were, also, accepted as is and were not to be recalled, but future lots would be derived under the more restrictive conditions. Is that correct?
	DR. EGAN: That is absolutely correct, but at the time that that was being discussed we were not taking into consideration a number of small molecules like amino acids or tallow derivatives.
	DR. BOLTON:  One more question and then I think we should move to the presentations.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  I guess perhaps it will be answered in a while, but you showed us the names of four companies that produce amino acids. How many companies are there that actually do this and where do most of the amino acids that are used by pharmaceutical companies in the United States get them?  Are they European companies, Japanese companies or US companies?
	DR. FELDMAN: It was actually a rather fun exercise tracking down these four companies. We first contacted quite a few of the drug manufacturers to determine their sources of amino acids from which we received a combined list of maybe 17 to 25 suppliers, quote, unquote, and from this list I contacted or we contacted probably 85, 90 percent of them and what we found was that there are probably two or three major companies that make amino acids and a lot of smaller companies.
	The four major companies that we could identify were the ones listed there, Ajinomoto, Diechi(?) Degussa and Kirohako(?). We contacted or tried to contact all four of them to get information from them. I received no responses from one of the companies probably because it was in Japan and I might have had the wrong e-mail or phone number. The other three companies were contacted and invited to present. One company stated that since none of their amino acids come from bovine sources it is a moot point and declined the invitation and the other two companies are presenting here, and hopefully they will provide you with some information regarding the scope of their production and how much of a market slice of the pie they have.
	DR. BOLTON:  With that in mind let us move on to the first informational presentation, and that is Degussa-Rexim's amino acid production process presented by Mr. Gerard Richet, from Degussa-Rexim.
	MR. RICHET:  Yes, thank you for this invitation to present the process which we are using at Rexim-Degussa for the manufacture of amino acids.
	On the first slide you see two names, Degussa and Rexim. Degussa is a big chemical company with several 10,000 people employees and has six divisions and one of these six divisions is Fine Chemicals.  At Rexim we don't define chemicals and has approximately 600 employees in total working on amino acid production now.
	We have Degussa since 20 years, but we produce amino acids since 35 years. We have now three plants making amino acids for us. 
	The main plant is in France in Ham which is between Paris and Brussels with 450 employees.
	The second plant is in the South of Germany and the third plant is very recent. This is since the first of September; this is in the South of China in Nanning.
	The rest is just to mention amino acids which are produced by other divisions of Degussa for animal nutrition. So, there are plants for DL-methionine in the United States in Belgium, in Germany. There are plants for lysine also in the United States and in Slovakia and one plant in Slovakia for L-threonine.
	Now, we come to the processes.  So, in Ham we produce amino acids using two processes. The first one is extraction from protein hydrolyzates and second is purification from lower grades produced by other technologies.
	In Germany there is one amino acid which is produced by enzymatic resolution of a compound made by organic synthesis.
	In China there are four amino acids at the moment produced by biocatalysis and fermentation.
	I will now come in detail to each of these processes to explain to you how it works.  I have eight slides for the process. The first one tells you which amino acids are produced from hydrolysates, serine, threonine, proline, hydroxyproline, alanine, valine, isoleucine, leucine, phenylalanine, histidine and arginine.  These six amino acids are, also, present in protein hydrolysates but for economical reasons it is more often convenient to use ultrafiltration from feed materials.
	This slide shows the different steps which are necessary to extract one amino acid from protein hydrolysates.  This is a list of steps. After that I will come in detail to each step.
	So, there is a selection of the protein, so acidic hydrolysis, filtration, ion exchange chromatography, charcoal treatment, ultrafiltration, crystallization and ultrasterilization.
	Now, we come to the proteins. The proteins we use are keratins from feathers, mainly chicken and gelatin from pigs. So, there is no ruminant material. The other chemicals which are used to extract amino acids from protein hydrolysates are acid in base and alcohols and the selection of the material is made using regular audits.
	We are audited by the customers. We are inspected by the FDA and we apply the same system.  So, we audit our supplier.
	With these proteins the first step is to destroy the protein and we choose conditions which provoke the disappearance of the peptidic balance. Only short peptides remain, short peptides with two to four units and this is obtained by using  a large excess of hydrochloric acid, 20 percent concentrated, by heating over 100 degrees, at 105 degrees for feathers and 140 degrees for keratin.
	The short peptides, so after hydrolysis we can say that we mean that we obtain 95 percent of amino acids, 4 percent of dipeptides, 1 percent of three peptides.
	When we have the protein hydrolysates that is a complex mixture of 15 amino acids we separate the amino acids by ion exchange chromatography. So, it is not so simple as on an antical(?) scale. So, we need several chromatographic steps to get a complete separation. The separation is not only based on ionic properties but also on differences in size the size of amino acids and on the hydrophobicity. So, we see at the same time the separation of amino acids from peptides.
	The solutions which comes from the chromatography are these solutions, and they are generally yellow, contain some contaminants which are coloring substances and the elimination of these impurities is made by absorption with active charcoal. It is based on surface adsorption. So, the active charcoal which is a powder, also, fixes big molecules like all the toxins I mentioned and the toxins because in the past charcoal was the only way to remove endotoxins.
	Next step is ultrafiltration. The main purpose is biological purification for removal of endotoxins, toxins which are produced by microorganisms and microorganisms as well.  It is due to the fact that the main market of these amino acids is clinical nutrition and especially parenteral nutrition.
	We use now membranes with cut off of 5000 to 10,000 daltons and we measure efficiencies of the membrane filtration by making a limulus test. Only after ultrafiltration is done we can go to crystallization.
	The biological safety of amino acids is a concern for us since, well, 10 years now and already in 1992 we have been in contact with the Pasteur Institute to evaluate our process and we have started with expert reports and have, also, viral safety report made in 1998, also, made by the Pasteur Institute using two kinds of resistant and highly resistant virus. We have proved with the  Pasteur Institute that our process especially in the first step which is the acidic treatment with hydrochloric acid will remove all virus.  These amino acids are not produced from protein hydrolysates. So, we buy, in this case, these are generally cheap amino acids with one to three dollars per kilo and we buy these chemical grade amino acids and make the purifications using similar technologies and each time activated charcoal treatment and ultrafiltration.
	Aspartic vistoli(?) of the amino acids before the purification. So, it is for aspartic acid, the bioconversion of phenolic acid. I will come later on to the process.  Glutamine and lysine are produced by micrograde(?) fermentation and glycine has no optical center and it can be produced by organic synthesis.  In Germany we have one amino acid that we cannot get from protein hydrolysates and it is produced by enzymatic resolution. There methionine is a large-scale product for animal nutrition.  Several hundred thousand tons per year are produced in the world. There is an acetylation, then reaction with an enzyme which is produced by malts(?). The enzymes cut selectively one isomer of the acetyl DL-methionine and you get two compounds which are easy to separate by ion exchange, and you get by this way L-methionine. The N-acetyl-D-methionine is rosamized(?) and recycled in the process.
	In China we have in development four amino acids. So, China that is since the first of September of this year. The first one is aspartic acid. It is obtained by bioconversion of this simple acid, an acid from the, I would say petrochemical industry, ammonia plus these enzymes. So, after the bioconversion there is removal of the biocomponents, then precipitation because this particle has a low solubility in water, filtration and drying. The difference between aspartic acid and L-alanine is a carboxylic function. So, this aspartic acid can be submitted to seven enzymatic reactions which remove the carbon dioxide and the beta position to get L-alanine. The rest of the process is similar to the aspartic acid. After the bioreactions you filtrate the polymers, precipitate them in acid, filtrate and dry and two amino acids are produced in China, valine and isoleucine but these are animal-free processes. These are made by fermentation using sugar, cornsteep, ammonia for the protamine ingredients. After the fermentation is finished, biomass is removed. Ion exchange is used to make the purification and again we have the crystallization, filtration and drying.
	The same is true for isoleucine.  Okay, this is the process that Rexim-Degussa is using for producing amino acids.  We are convinced that by all controls that we have on the processes all steps we use, our amino acids are safe.
	DR. BOLTON:  Thank you, Mr. Richet.
	Questions from the Committee?
	I will ask the question I asked last time. In your final product what percent contaminants are there and what are they?
	MR. RICHET;  The amino acids are all in the Pharmacopeia. So, the basis of the control of the chemical control and biological control of the amino acids established in monographs of the Pharmacopeia in Japan, in Europe or in United States where we satisfy the three Pharmacopeias.  The Pharmacopeia uses I would say sometimes third methods and there is the influence of our customers and of our FDA inspectors. We have installed since 5 to 10 years now an additional control which is generally HPLC and here the move is you have to identify if any impurities which have a response of more than 0.1 percent.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  Let me ask it a different way? Are there any peptides larger than 4 amino acids in length?
	MR. RICHET: We have checked the protein hydrolysates with gel chromatography by injecting some molecules with low molecular weight and it was not possible to detect compounds bigger than let us say 1000 in molecular weight.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  The other question that kind of goes with this is that at no time in any of these processes even in China are the starting reagents the, for instance, of fumaric acid or anything else, are they derived at any point from bovine?  None of your starting reagents or your enzymes, do they come, under any circumstance do they come from bovine?
	MR. RICHET:  The answer that I made for amino acid is which is produced by cultivating molds and that is same for other bacteria and other enzymes like aspartase or aspartic decarboxylase, those are the processes which are classified as bio, so, bioconversion of fermentations are bovine free.  The medium which is used in the future to make the growth of the bacteria contains only products coming from corn or sugar or ammonia, products like that.
	DR. BOLTON:  Does that, also, apply to the lower grade amino acids which are the source material for glycine and lysine?
	MR. RICHET:  Glycine is made completely by synthesis.  You can have, for instance, you can treat with ammonia, chloracetic acid and you get glycine. So, you don't need any bovine material.  Using hedocurate(?) is produced by fermentations and to my knowledge there is absolutely no bovine material in the fermentations and probably the next speaker can confirm that because they produce these amino acids. To my knowledge there is no bovine material in the fermentation.
	DR. BOLTON:  Perhaps I was confused by the title of your slide. I am looking at the handout. The title of the slide is purification from lower-grade (feed) and then it gives these examples. Are those amino acids not further refined from feed-grade amino acids that are obtained by another source or am I confused?
	Your slide, purification from lower-grade feed, it is on Page 4 at the bottom of the handout. I am not sure which slide.  It is right after slide 8 of 8 of the, yes, that is right, it must be slide No. 12 or slide No. 9. Three more, continue.  Next slide?
	This slide.  The title seems to imply that these amino acids are purified from lower-grade amino acids that are feed grade amino acids.
	MR. RICHET:  Lower grade is an evidence. So amino acids which are produced for animal nutrition can have a purity of 98 and 99 percent.  For pharmaceutical grade you need at least 99.5.  So, from lower grade only means purity between the two, between the starting material and the purified material.
	DR. BOLTON:  So, those lower-grade source materials for the fine grade are actually produced by your own plants and also do not contain any bovine materials. Is that correct or are they sourced from some other supplier that manufactures these lower-grade amino acids.
	MR. RICHET:  What I have said is valid for nutrition grade material and lower-grade material.  We mix animal feed with non-pharmaceutical grade. So, it isn't the case or animal feed is not used directly. It is converted by organic synthesis to another medium for other applications, but for the animo acids which are used largely to humans so that what I have said is true that always we have limited material now.
	DR. BOLTON:  Other questions?
	DR. DE ARMOND:  Let me say that it must mean purification to lower grade rather than from because I had the same problem which is why I asked the general question. They are purifying this to 95 percent purity for use in feeds. Is that --
	MR. RICHET:  Yes, lower-grade feed, that is 98 and 99 percent.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  And that means then that is how that lower-grade amino acid is produced. This slide illustrates how the lower-grade amino acids are produced.
	MR. RICHET: Examples of lower-grade amino acid aspartic acid obtained by bioconversion with fumaric acid, you first get a chemical grade and since it can contain endotoxin, it can contain 0.3 percent femeracaceda(?) and the purifications, the aglycosylations(?) that we use here remove or decrease the initial impurities to the pharmaceutical grade.  Lysine that is the same. Lysine you may have in the feed-grade material 0.5 percent of oliamin(?) acid for instance.  So, it is a product we add in fermentation, it is not quite like pharmaceutical product.  It is a little bit lower. It could contain crosidia(?) salts and this doesn't pass the Pharmacopeia standard. That is why we use the ultra sterilization to increase the purity and glycine is the same.
	DR. BOLTON:  I see. I actually misread the bottom of the slide. So, the origins are listed, none of which are from bovine materials. Okay.
	Ray and then Pedro?
	DR. ROOS: The slide before this mentions that the Pasteur Institute carried on some investigation. Were there actually experiments done or did they just review the process here?
	MR. RICHET:  We sent to them a total description of the process and the study which was made in 1998, so they have had two viruses to the protein before acidic hydrolysis and then they heat to simulate in their lab our process and then they measure the content of virus after the equivalent of the hydrolysis step.
	DR. PICCARDO: You start from the assumption that there will be or there are no contaminants. In the very unlikely event, that isn't what you said, but there is a contaminant coming from another source, was any experiment done to, I mean like spiking to see if that procedure destroys BIP or C?
	MR. RICHET: Any experiments by adding, well, thions(?) or --
	DR. PICCARDO:  Yes.
	MR. RICHET: This has not been done since we switched, since we use non-ruminant material.
	DR. PICCARDO:  I understand that, but my point is in the unlikely event that for whatever reason it is a contaminant coming from a source that you cannot identify, in the very unlikely event of a contaminant, my question  is if you know for sure that these methods will destroy BIP or C in that event?   So, that experiment was not done?
	MR. RICHET; No.
	DR. BOLTON:  Other questions?
	Lisa?
	DR. FERGUSON: If you would go forward two slides and you are talking about the production at the plant in Germany what is the source of the DL-methionine that you start with there?
	MR. RICHET:  DL-methionine is produced by organic synthesis. It starts from the beginning from early chemicals like a choline, methinegatapon(?) and this is a total synthesis, only chemical material here.
	So, choline is something coming, also, from petroleum industry, not directly the plant.
	DR. BOLTON:  Other questions?
	Very good. Thank you very much.
	Our next presentation is by Mr.Mike McLean on Ajinomoto's amino acid production process.
	Mr. McLean?
	MR. MC LEAN:  Good morning or actually I think it is good afternoon, now.  I am Mike McLean.  I am the quality assurance director for Ajinomoto at our Raleigh, North Carolina facility.  This facility makes pharmaceutical grade amino acids for a variety of companies.
	I want to give you a little bit of history about Ajinomoto worldwide.  The company was started in 1908 using -- 
	Next slide, please?
	It started in 1908, by Professor Kukrani Ekada(?), and he isolated glutamic acid as a key flavor ingredient from a component of dosy(?). This is a seaweed, and he discovered that it had the flavoring properties what is now called umami(?). From that time we have expanded into a lot of different areas as a company. Beginning in 1950, the company started doing R&D for fermentation technology to produce amino acids. Before that time it was from an extraction from vegetable proteins, mainly for the food industry.
	Beginning in 1960, the company began producing amino acids by fermentation technology in their plants in Japan. 
	In addition to supplying amino acids to the pharmaceutical industry, amino acids are supplied to foods, seasonings, cosmetics, sweeteners and animal feeds.
	Next slide, please?
	For the pharmaceutical industry Ajinomoto is the largest manufacturer.  These show some of the other manufacturers. We have around 60 percent. This is a little old slide, 1997, but we have around 60 percent of the world market for pharmaceutical grade amino acids.
	So, Ajinomoto feels like we have a responsibility to supply the highest quality amino acids to the world. Most of our amino acids are used as the USD standards and the JP standards.
	We have been aware for more than 10 years about the BSE issues and both from the FDA and their letters and information they publish on their web sites, also, from our customers. A tremendous amount of interest has been generated there and, also, from the news media.
	We have reviewed all of our pharmaceutical amino acid processes extensively in a science-based approach, and what we did was we looked at the processes to see what type of risk there could be from the process itself what type of risk there could be from the components that were used and then how ready the process was to remove any possible BSE agents.
	We believe that the risk of BSE agents in amino acids is extremely remote and essentially negligible for our production processes. We do not use any ruminant material for our production processes. The extraction processes that we use are all of vegetable origin.
	I want to present the Committee very detailed information about our production processes in the next closed session and to help them understand how we have reached the conclusion that our amino acids are safe.
	The information I am going to present is from our drug master files which is naturally very confidential and I think it has been mentioned that these drug master files are used by CDER and CBER in review of other drug components and as excipients for a variety of pharmaceutical products.
	DR. BOLTON:  Before we move then into the closed session, I just would like to ask if there are any representatives of other amino acid manufacturers that would like to make a brief statement before we move into the -- yes, please identify yourself?
	MR. BLANE(?):  My name is Don Blane. I am representing Kilahago(?) USA. We are one of the producers identified, and as mentioned earlier our production method is fermentation. So, we have discussed with FDA our methods of production and again, similarly we have drug master files in place with the FDA. So the material supplied as excipient or reagent activity adheres to the drug master file which is for the active applications.
	DR. BOLTON:  Thank you, and I will invite you back at the open public hearing afterwards if you have any additional comments to make.
	MR. BLANE:  Thank you.
	DR. BOLTON:  Are there any other representatives of amino acid manufacturers who would like to make a comment at this time?
	DR. LURIE:  David, unless I am missing something here we have heard from, I assume that the people who are going to speak in the closed session are people who have already spoken here. We seemed to have heard that they don't use any animal ruminant material at all. I am not sure why it is particularly of interest to hear about their processes at all.  It seems unnecessary.
	DR. BOLTON:  Is that a correct understanding? You use absolutely no ruminant source materials at all?
	MR. MC LEAN:  Yes, that is correct.
	DR. LURIE: I suppose then the question would be just to FDA, if FDA is adequately assured by these manufacturers, at least or those who might appear in the closed session that indeed there are no ruminant materials involved in the production of those amino acids.
	DR. FELDMAN: The issue I think is not just what the current processes are but what past processes have been since amino acids sit on a shelf for many years or could sit on a shelf for many years or you can be using amino acid mixtures that were used maybe 5 or 6 or 7 or 10 years ago when you developed your working cell bank or developed the product at that time.
	So, we would like to be assured that the processes that were described here are the processes that were used during the height of the epidemic in Europe and in the UK and that if there were ruminant materials used in the past 10 years how the processes have changed since then.
	DR. BOLTON:  Let me then ask Mr. McLean if your presentation will address only current processes or will it also address historical processes that might have been in place during the years of the height of the BSE epidemic?
	MR. MC LEAN: I can explain both.
	DR. BOLTON:  Okay, then there will be some value in continuing in the closed session.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  Can't we just ask the general question, have the  processes changed in the last couple of years?
	MR. MC LEAN:  We have one process that has changed. We now use fermentation process for S-serine. 
	DR. DE ARMOND:  Several years ago did anyone  use bovine as a source, bovine products of any type as a source or any ruminant product as a source for the final product?
	MR. MC LEAN: Aginomoto did not. I cannot speak for --
	DR. DE ARMOND:  And we have the others. Did anybody else use that?
	DR. BOLTON:  The closed session is only going to address their process. Aginomoto has never used any bovine or other ruminant source tissue?
	MR. MC LEAN: Similar to what the previous gentleman said, we in the past have purchased pharmaceutical grade amino acids, purified those through our process and sold those as Ajinomoto products.  My understanding is that those, in the case of L-serine we have two sources. One of those sources was a bovine-derived source. This was up until 1997..
	DR. BOLTON:  Okay, I am in a bit of a quandary. So, it may be worth addressing that particular process for the serine that was historically purchased from another supplier as a less pure amino acid.
	MR. MC LEAN: Right, and we were purchasing the pharmaceutical grade.
	DR. BOLTON:  I guess I am confused. if you were purchasing pharmaceutical grade why would you need to repurify it?
	MR. MC LEAN: It is a marketing decision. I wouldn't like to --
	(Laughter.)
	DR. BOLTON:  That is beyond me, but I am only a scientist.
	MR. MC LEAN: In addition to -- Ajinomoto likes to supply all of the amino acids that any particular company might need, and you know, we are not a boutique shop. We are like a department store. You can get whatever you need, and so we chose at the time to purchase material from competitors, purify that in our process and use that.
	DR. BOLTON:  What was the time frame for that?
	MR. MC LEAN: Up until 1998 for bovine-derived material.
	DR. BOLTON:  Okay, so, I think it would be worthwhile to consider this. Let us then move to closed session.  How do we do that, Bill?
	DR. FREAS:  At this time I will have to ask all of the members of the public to leave.  I am going to ask that you take with you any briefcases,  purses, pocketbooks and coats. We want to make sure the room is cleared.  Anything left behind we will have to put out in the hall.  So, enjoy a nice lunch, and we will reconvene for the public in approximately an hour and one-half. Yes, I would say that at one-thirty we will probably reconvene for the public.
	(Thereupon, at 12:10 p.m., a recess was taken until 1:42 p.m., the same day.)
                       AFTERNOON SESSION            1:42 PM
	DR. BOLTON:  I would like to begin the  open session this afternoon, the open public hearing, if everyone will take their seats.  We are missing a few Committee members.
	Are there any members of the public in the audience who would like to make a statement, a comment, present information?
	Yes, please go to the microphone and introduce yourself.
	DR. RADISSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  My name is Dr. Scott Radisson. I edit the Journal of Health Communication and have faculty appointments at Yale University School of Medicine, George Washington University School of Medicine and Tufts University School of Medicine.
	I edited a book 4 years ago called The Mad Cow Crisis:  Health and the Public Good that was published by NYU Press and University College London Press.
	I am proud to say that Dr. Les Crawford wrote the first leading chapter in it, and that it is nice to have a successful book that dealt with the science of how we communicate risk.
	The reason I wanted to address the Committee today was that I am very concerned about how we continue to look at risk and in particular how a couple of evidenced-based examples of how Committee decisions, both this agency and other agencies have led to an erosion in public trust and unfortunately led to an erosion of what I am most interested in, the public health, and that is why I can address specifically the three questions that are the charge to the Committee today, but more specifically I am going to actually build on the case study of thimerosal.
	As you might know, thimerosal began as a potential risk by an FDA advisory that came out in July 1999, that was subsequently followed up by the Centers for Disease Control's ACIP, Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the American Academy of Pediatrics, as well as the US Public Health Service issuing a potential recall of vaccines that would have thimerosal in them.
	Just this week in the Wall Street Journal subsequent to an  Institute of Medicine that came out this October 1, they were talking about this risk of what has happened to the public health of 1.4 doses of vaccine that ar back ordered now for DTP because of potential risk of thimerosal that never has been supported.
	Both the original discussions that were made by and decisions that were made by those three groups, the FDA, the ACIP as well as the AAP were dealing with theoretical risks that were of two unpublished studies, and still the  Institute of Medicine highlighted in their report that these were unpublished studies. The report highlighted, however, that there still if biological plausibility.
	What has happened as I have seen from a macro approach over the years that  I have been looking at how we look at risk is we continue to lower the bar. We have taken the precautionary principle that was used for environmental toxins, and we have started to apply it to health.
	Now, the  Institute of Medicine has been charged to look at biological plausibility, and this Committee is being asked to look at the likelihood of transmission.
	Last year when this Committee looked at vaccines and bovine source materials there were some excellent quantitative analyses that placed the risk somewhere at 1 in 5 billion. That would be one person on the planet if they would be exposed and if we were so lucky to inoculate everybody on this planet which we know we have not been so successful in our careers.
	So, my point here today is that how we determine what risk is which is in each of these three questions, and we don't just look at risk in terms of the theoretical transmission at the molecular level in all due respect to many of you that are involved in molecular biology which is obviously so important, but we redefine risk due to what the  Institute of Medicine has suggested as well as other groups continue to suggest to look at societal risks and if we make decisions based upon some of these hypothetical natures that are out there, and we continue to lower the bar to talk about biological plausibility and theoretical pieces that are made perhaps for academic institutions and play with it in the public health, and I say with it in the public health sector because there have been deaths due to the thimerosal decision. A baby died in Michigan because there has been a 67 percent decrease in hospitals that are immunizing for hepatitis because of that potential theoretical negligible hypothetical risk that has been quoted through different scientific committees.
	I was at the CDC as part of the American Public Health Association meeting in Atlanta on Monday and spoke to the Hepatitis Branch and they are having an incredibly difficult time to rebuild the trust at the public level in getting hepatitis vaccines and at the policy level at hospitals throughout the country because now people are questioning what this risk means. Consumer groups are grabbing onto these hypothetical non-peer reviewed scientifically advanced studies that unfortunately are not taken into the public health side of the equation.
	So, at the end of the day I hope all of you when you do look at the numbers here and do look at the probabilities and do think of what this means that we don't just think what it means for this Committee, but we think of the cascading effect of what this means for society and we, also, think of a cascading effect that sometimes doing the right thing is difficult and doing the right thing is not always the right thing to do in terms of always trying to press policy down to a hypothetical infinitesimal risk that is very difficult to translate to the public.
	I appreciate the opportunity here. I know this is a charge that perhaps is broader than what the Committee is looking at today. Maybe in the future we will be able to determine what is a valid standard; what are the objective criteria that we need to do and we need to apply in thinking in risk?
	It has been 5 years since the mad cow crisis broke out from the original CIAT(?) Committee in the UK March 20, 1996.
	Some people predicted it was the AIDS epidemic that Britain never had. Even last year the Frankfort Aldemanya(?) said, "This was the black death reminiscent of the plague of the Middle Ages in terms of what would happen to the continent." We know neither of those has been true. There have only been one hundred and some odd cases now of CJD and today's issue of Science is actually going to say that they are above the hump. The epidemic is definitely going down both with vCJD as well with BSE. This is another from one of the London School studies. We know that science is incremental. We know that ways to validate risk and to measure risk are difficult at best.
	My suggestion again is that we try to think of the societal risk and we try to bring that to a larger proportion in all of our activities whether it be FDA, other advisory committees or whether the ethical nature of what we do, if we are sitting behind the bench and practicing our science on a day-to-day basis.
	Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and the Committee, and I would always be happy to talk in the future about any of these items. My role and goal is to have effective and ethical health communication, and that is what I have been dedicating my life to.
	Thank you.
	DR. FREAS:  For the record I would like to ask this speaker and all future speakers who want to address us in open public hearing to address any interests that they may have on any statements that they have regarding any products, firms or issues that they have for the record.
	Thank you.
	DR. RADISSON:  Sure, for the record I actively consult with a variety of different pharmaceutical companies, public relations firms, academic institutions and my principal position is to work on the communications strategy for the US Government for the US Agency for International Development's public health, population, nutrition, HIV activities. Those would be my conflicts, and two other conflicts I guess I could say. My wife is Belgian and I, like many of us, I own mutual funds in the health care field.
	Thank you.
	DR. BOLTON:  Thank you. Additional comments or presentations from the public?
	DR. LURIE: Could I just comment on that? I have got to say that there is something about that presentation that really seems almost offensive to me as a member of this Committee. The fact of the matter is that there are times in public health where the only kinds of decisions that are available, the only basis for decisions that is available to us is in fact biological plausibility, and indeed that is what we have dealt with in this Committee to a large extent, I think rather well, and I bet that there are people in Britain who wish they had relied on that argument a lot stronger back in the late eighties and early nineties.  At times that is the only thing one has, and it is appropriate in those cases as I believe the situation here to make decisions on that basis.
	DR. BOLTON:  Thank you, Peter.
	Additional presentations, other presentations from the public?
	Going once. Going twice.  Seeing none, we will move on to the Committee discussion and votes. I open up the discussion to the Committee regarding the preparation of amino acids as has been presented. 
	We will eventually address at least Question 1, I believe Question 1 as presented on the handout, but I am not absolutely certain of that. So, we may bring it up on the overhead as well to confirm the exact wording of this question.
	DR. CLIVER: What I heard in this session has been very reassuring. I wonder, obviously the major question turned on whether materials of bovine origin were being used as sources, raw material, for amino acid preparation, and  indeed  if the molecular weight is small enough or whatever results, I cannot even get too worked up, if it was of bovine origin. Having said that, we heard from two very large-scale producers that represent a majority of the market.  If we are still concerned about bovine origin and so on, why then to what degree can we generalize from what we have heard?
	Are there major smaller segments of the market represented by people who are out there using cow brains to make amino acids from?  I think it most unlikely, but all the same, if we are going to have a vanishingly small probability of error on this, where will we get that information?
	DR. BOLTON:  I don't have an answer to that question. Does anybody else want to attempt that?
	No?  Well, as I read this question there are two words that I think either make this very easy or very difficult to answer, and those words are "can minimize."
	Let me just read the question?  Does the Committee think that the current manufacturing process and control methods utilized by the manufacturers of amino acids can minimize the risk to allow bovine-derived amino acids from BSE countries to be used as reagents and excipients for the production of pharmaceutical products?
	How doe we define minimize, and of course, I would guess that the manufacturing process can do it? The question is does it do it and is it prudent, then should it do it under the optimal conditions; should we then allow companies to use bovine-derived or bovine source materials to derive amino acids from BSE countries?  That may be the more cogent question.
	Would anyone like to address that?
	DR. EWENSTEIN:  It just seems sort of easy to me.  I mean I think in this case we don't need to worry about major hits on supply because we already know that for most of the supply the question is moot and it seems to me that if anyone really absolutely needs to use ruminant source material they should be required to do a validation procedure to show that their process which we cannot really evaluate because we didn't hear about the process but we should have as a principle or advise as a principle that a validation step be included  so that they can prove that TSE infectivity is destroyed in their process, and it is probably moot anyway but I think that would at least set the bar where it needs to be for the small segment of the manufacturing community that might still be using that material.
	DR. BOLTON:  That sounds reasonable to me. 
	Other comments?
	Yes, Steve?
	DR. DE ARMOND:  It, also, seems moot to me because they testified that you don't need to use bovine.  What was it, 15 percent of the amino acid extraction was from bovine gelatin and now they are using porcine gelatin.  So, I don't like this because they have already shown us that they don't need to use bovine. Why get involved with it in the first place at this stage in history?
	DR. BOLTON:  Let me put forward a hypothetical scenario, and that is let us say I am an enterprising business person and I realize that there is a tremendous glut of meat and bone meal on the market because it essentially has no value, and I realize that I might purchase this up for a very low price and hydrolyze it to make amino acids to sell to pharmaceutical companies. So, now the question becomes, yes, most of the manufacturers are using plant source material or other non-bovine material, but I have a new company, and I want to come out and sell this product. What would we recommend? What would the FDA do about the use of that product in these kinds of products?
	DR. DE ARMOND:  I would recommend, in fact, require that they go to a country that doesn't have BSE in it, such as the United States and use their cattle, have their own cattle ranches where they can assure that they don't get sick cattle.  I know that there are companies involved in the formation of collagen. They keep their own herds so that they eliminate that possibility.
	So, this guy should be a cattle rancher, also.
	DR. BOLTON:  I am glad I stimulated some discussion here.  Pierluigi?
	DR. GAMBETTI:  I agree with one correction though. We don't have any case or we have not had any case of BSE in this country which is not exactly the same thing as saying that we don't have BSE in this country. 
	So, my feeling would be that as I heard already here that really the recommendation would be not to use any amino acid derived from bovine tissue.  It looks to me from the presentation that this would not really seriously impair production. It looks to me that the great majority, I don't know as we were saying the minor producers, but it looks to me like the major producers are not using bovine material, bovine tissue already. So, it looks like it would not impair production, and this in my opinion would be really the effective way to minimize the danger of the health hazards of this problem.
	DR. CLIVER:  From an expediency standpoint no one could disagree with what was just said. On the other hand we do hear that we are supposed to be doing science-based regulation in the United States and I submit that if you don't have polypeptides in your amino acid preparation there is no way regardless of the origin for that to be an infectious agent, prion or otherwise.
	Now, in part of the things I do in addition to food safety, I work with water and waste water, and there is a lot of recycling of water going on now, and it invokes a lot of public angst, and so, I have a pair of slides that I use, one showing the very precise structure of a water molecule and then a sewage molecule. This is water that has at some time been in the sewer and in the public perception it can't ever be fit to drink again.  In fact, we drink a lot of recycled water especially in Los Angeles, but my point is to the extent that we learned what amino acids were when we took our first course in biochemistry, these are not disease agents and to the extent that we can prepare amino acids in a scientific technologically sound way I think it is an unfortunate perversion of science to decide that because that particular molecule of amino acid at some time was part of a cow that it is no longer fit for any use in human pharmacopeia. That is just my point of view, but I think we get a lot of emotion and science gets kind of elbowed aside by expediency and what is politically correct, and at some point if this is a panel of scientists we have to admit that it is very difficult to tell an amino acid that is of bovine origin from one from bacteria or from plants.
	DR. EWENSTEIN:  I agree with that, but don't you think that as I was trying to say that you know, it is incumbent upon the manufacturer to do an actual validation and not just to sort of suppose that the hydrolysis step is sufficient?
	DR. CLIVER: I have no problem with that at all. What I don't like is the idea that somehow or other because we bovine derived it is never going to be a problem amino acid, but as far as validation of a process is concerned I think anything that they are going to inject in me I would like to have the process validated.
	DR. ROOS:  It seems to me unwise to, if one uses a bovine product to get it from any BSE country. So, whereas I could see that there may be a reason that somebody might want to make an amino acid from a cow, I would say that if one does that it should be from a non-BSE country, and it should be validated.
	I think that a little similar issue that perhaps this question touches on has to do with products that are on the shelf or that involve the use of a seed stock, and I don't want to exactly go back to a vaccine but probably there are going to be other drugs that might actually have some remnant of bovine amino acid from a BSE country that might be in use today, and it is hard to deal with that at present.
	In the case of vaccines I think we explored that issue extensively, and I think we were reassured that there was this enormous dilution and that we were dealing with a safe product.  We haven't really identified a comparable issue in other drug products in use in the United States today, but there may be, and perhaps if we identified those that  they should be explored.
	At the moment it seems like we don't have an issue because we have no ongoing use of bovine-derived products from BSE countries in which amino acids are being actively made at present.
	DR. LURIE;  I think what Pierluigi is saying is eminently reasonable and I remain concerned, of course that some 20 percent of the worldwide amino acid market was not represented here, and so, we really don't know what they are doing.
	To go to Bruce's point I mean the amount of information that we have about the various purification steps here is nothing like what we have had, for example, last time with gelatin. I mean this was the merest sketch of the purification system. We simply don't know much about it. So, I think that Pierluigi's approach is absolutely a reasonable one here.
	My question, assuming we go that route is well, I guess one recommendation would be is to put a letter out to the people who have received some of these bovine-derived amino acids asking them to take it off the shelf. That seems to me a useful thing that the FDA could call upon the manufacturer to do, but I guess my question would be if we go Pierluigi's route what is different; what have we actually done? I mean isn't that what the 1991 letter said in the first place when the FDA wrote the 1993 letter at least?  isn't the FDA here asking in effect for an exception from what they did in 1993?
	In 1993, there was a letter sent to manufacturers saying, "Do not source materials for administration to humans from BSE countries."  Right?  So, if we were to endorse what Pierluigi is saying, all we are saying is yes, we agree with the 1993 letters that apparently some of the manufacturers didn't pay attention to. Is that right?
	DR. FELDMAN:  I think that is absolutely correct. One option of the Committee is to state that, I mean that is our word, to qualify it as an exception from the 1991 guidance and letters to industry.  The Center for Biologics felt that given the existence of this Committee it was not our determination to make that decision but rather yours, if you feel that the evidence presented today supports that decision. So, from a regulatory perspective and from a scientific perspective I, personally, would be very happy to see an exception for amino acids if one is justified.
	If not, then we just go back to the 1991, 1993 and 1994 and 1996 and 2000 statements and letters to industry stating that no bovine-derived products from BSE countries are permitted in use of drug products as excipients  or reagents with no change essentially.
	DR. LEITMAN:  Particularly after what we heard this morning I think the definition of a BSE country is a moving target.  It doesn't stay stationary.  I have heard multiple veterinary scientists say, "Just wait until the first case comes up, is recognized in the US, and all of a sudden the whole world becomes a BSE country."
	So, I would let the 2001 restrict source material by country of source.  As far as the second issue I think despite the best of QA efforts and well-validated processes for manufacturer, breaches in good manufacturing practice do occur. They are rare, but they could have devastating consequences. So, since the two major manufacturers have told us it is not necessary, they haven't lost market share by not using bovine source material in their products and perhaps the reason the other manufacturers aren't here is because it is not an issue for them, I don't think it makes any impact to do the very safest thing possible that was suggested which is to restrict use of any bovine material from amino acid production. That would be my take from the discussion so far.
	DR. BOLTON:  Additional comments?  Ermias?
	DR. BELAY:  I was just going to say that it appears that we have a good system already, and from what they told us they are not using bovine sources. So, why change the system when you don't have any problem right now? So, continue the way they have been doing so far and avoid using bovine tissues as long as it does not affect the supply or have any other adverse effect that we should start to worry about, and from what we heard  it doesn't appear that it is any problem at all right now.
	DR. LURIE:  There are two small problems. One is that at least one manufacturer did not comply with FDA's 1991 letter and did continue to use bovine materials we think from Europe, I think that is correct, despite that. That is one problem although that seems to be in the past and to the extent those get taken off the shelf that does become a non-problem.
	The second problem is there is 20 percent of the market we don't know anything about.
	DR. ROOS:  Son, one of the issues is should we restrict the preparation of any amino acid so it does use a cow from anywhere, and you know at the moment I mean there are bovine products that are in use from non-BSE countries routinely and if one forbids this with respect to amino acids it seems to me that one is kind of making an exception as far as the general use of bovine products.  I think it is a little more consistent to bar amino acids made from bovine products of BSE countries.  In the case of tallow where there is an exception it is hard to exclude tallow from other uses we have, and it is a very low risk we think. 
	In the case of amino acids it looks like there are many other alternative sources. So, I don't see any reason why we should import that bovine product from BSE countries, but I didn't think we should necessarily restrict amino acid preparation from bovine just because there is an alternative source here.
	On the other hand I think we can ask for appropriate validation of bovine products. What exactly that appropriate validation is I am not sure at this point but would touch upon some kinds of options that are appropriate.
	DR. BOLTON:  Thankfully that is not  our task today to define criteria. I think it should be re-emphasized that bovine products, especially fetal bovine serum are used in producing many of these products. So, that is already a given. Those are not sourced from BSE countries though. They are sourced from non-BSE countries. So we wouldn't want to make this I don't believe more restrictive by saying, "No bovine material can be used."
	On the other hand it might be prudent given the fact that BSE countries or BSE-free countries may in fact be a moving target to ask that those processes that use bovine materials as a source for amino acids be validated in a way that those using plant or bacterial sources would not be required to do so.
	Jeffrey?
	DR. MCCULLOUGH: Another reason to take that position is maybe heresy but consistency from this Committee. We have agreed that people can donate blood from non-BSE countries and we agreed that plasma donors are, also, acceptable. So it would seem, while I agree that BSE countries are moving target it would seem inconsistent to allow blood donation that we spent hours agonizing over from non-BSE countries but at the same time restrict source material.
	DR. BOLTON:  Again, I just want to make a comment. In my opinion the safety of amino acids having gone through the hydrolysis and purification steps, ion exchange, filtration all the things, the likelihood of any prion-infectivity surviving is very, very low. It is so extremely low as to be almost inconceivable. So, we don't want to be arguing over this very, very minimal risk involved. However, it might make sense to say, "Look, the problem is again, how faithfully are the manufacturing steps followed?  How likely is there to be a breach?"  Those things can be verified by validation studies and by quality assurance programs. Should bovine materials be used from non-BSE countries? It provides at least an extra level of safety or assurance of safety that might be desirable for amino acids produced from bovine source materials as opposed to plant or bacteria sources.
	DR. LURIE:  I generally but not specifically agree with what you are saying.  I don't think that the right analogy here is that we take blood transfusions. I think the right analogy is to other restrictions we have placed on other bovine source materials and in that case I am not aware. and maybe FDA can correct me on this, I don't think there is any other place where we have ever said, "No bovines, period."
	It seems kind of ironic to apply that in light of the situations of the world, and that so, I really agree with Ray on that, but I, also, agree with Bruce that I think if somebody wants to go to a non-BSE country and source their amino acids let us force them to do some validation steps and probably what will happen is that they will decide let us not use bovine.
	DR. GAMBETTI: I think there should be at least two elements that we should consider in every recommendation that we make. One is safety, but the other, also is impact that whatever recommendation we make has on the consumer, the user.
	So, not necessarily we would be consistent if we recommend different things for different products. For some of the products safety has to be always beef as choice but reduced by the necessity of not limiting the availability of the product. In others like this one it looks like we can be in a sense more restricting even if the product is less dangerous because it doesn't look to me at least that limiting the source of the bovine tissue really impairs availability of the product. So, I think there are these two factors that have to be considered every time we make a recommendation.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  I think the danger, Pierluigi that I am catching from you a little bit here is that every cow has to be assumed to be potentially sick with BSE, and I don't think that is necessarily true. 
	I think you can have sequestered herds even probably in Great Britain in which that wouldn't happen in which they are fed soybean pellets instead of any type of meat product of any type and I think in the United States as I say pharmaceutical companies in the United States have sequestered herds that they can get their products from.
	I think it is absolutely possible to have prion-free cattle herds certainly under very rigid control and probably in the United States broadly but I think if you could define those, I think they should have the ability to take bovine if they can prove that the animal doesn't have BSE.
	So, I find that it shouldn't be a broad spectrum inhibition of the use of all cattle. Now, bovine from a BSE country to me that is the only question that I have to worry about.
	DR. GAMBETTI:  The problem is always the same, how we define BSE and non-BSE countries, especially a non-BSE country. For me the only definition of a non-BSE country is a country that has done extensive testing and has resulted consistently negative, and I don't know of any such country.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  But there are herds that are just by themselves in which that has been done.
	DR. GAMBETTI:  Yes, if they use their own cattle then there is no question that that can be safe.
	DR. BELAY:  If what Steve is saying can be done, and I don't have any problem with that, but at the same time I believe we have to be very careful not to say to the companies that they have done wrong by switching voluntarily from bovine sources to other sources.  In other words they are voluntarily sourcing their animals from other than bovine origin.  Our general statement should recognize the fact that the company has taken measures and we should commend them for that.
	DR. LURIE; I disagree with that. They have done something wrong. In 1991, the FDA asked them not to do it, and at least one company did. They did do something wrong.
	DR. BELAY: I am talking about the current practice.
	DR. LEITMAN;  A quick comment. This Committee in considering blood donations pushed the restrictions to the limit to which it felt the blood donation and collection organizations could tolerate the restrictions. So, if you follow that analogy to push amino acid source material to the limit to which their industries could tolerate it, it would be to push it to completely exclude ruminant animals. So, there is an analogy there. I don't know if I would follow that analogy, but that would be a proper analogy.
	DR. BOLTON:  I guess I feel that we must be careful not to send the wrong message and that message would be that there is something wrong with cattle from non-BSE countries. Otherwise why would we exclude using that as source material to derive amino acids which are in the very process themselves essentially safe?  So, I am very, very concerned that we would go too far. I mean basically the FDA is asking us for advice on whether we would reduce the restriction and allow bovine source material from BSE countries to be hydrolyzed and used as amino acids.
	It seems clear that the Committee is not comfortable with that idea. However I don't think that we should move farther in the other direction to say that we don't want any bovine material at all used in this. I think clearly that sends in my opinion the wrong message.
	DR. ROOS: I think under some circumstances I might accept amino acids that are bovine derived from BSE countries perhaps. In other words,  going back to the vaccine issue although, and those are complicated ones, and I don't know whether we want to go into that, but we are dealing with big dilution factors and a very safe product are far as partitioning and hydrolysis, and that makes the question a little bit more complicated here because what are those products and what is the dilution and can there be an alternative source and we really haven't addressed that here, but it is good to remind ourselves in a way we have made a little bit of an exception there as far as letting those products that might have some contamination in animals today. It would be great to in fact be able to replace those materials if possible with safer ones if possible.
	DR. BOLTON:  But would you be suggesting that products that may have contained amino acids from bovine sources from BSE countries be pulled from the shelves and destroyed?  My personal feeling on that is that the products that are out there now are safe. It does not make sense, in fact, is probably counter productive to ask for recalls and destruction of products in those conditions. 
	It makes sense to me to move forward and look at this as a change in policy from this day forward in terms of amino acids sourced from either bovine or ruminant sources in BSE countries. That is about as far as I would believe would be worth going.
	DR. ROOS:  But my guess is that ones are still being put on the shelf like that, for example, vaccines might continue to have these diluted amino acids. I believe that --
	DR. BOLTON:  From the original cell banks.
	DR. ROOS:  Right, and maybe we should get off the vaccine issue but there may be other comparable drugs that might contain products that have amino acids from these BSE countries that continue to be put on shelves.
	DR. BOLTON:  That is a question that perhaps somebody from FDA could answer whether there would be products that would fall into category.
	In the meantime, Sue, you have a comment?
	DR. PRIOLA:  All of this discussion seems to get a the first half of this question and that is do we think the methods used to manufacture minimize the risk of allowing BSE contamination. I haven't heard anybody disagree I think with that assessment given the way these processes are used. So, long shelf life might actually be not much of an issue if you think to start that the risk is minimal that anything could get through those manufacturing processes.
	That would be my response to that and the second part to this question which has to do with deriving amino acids from cattle from BSE source countries the consistent thing to do would be to, I think, just keep that prohibition in place because that is the prohibition that this Committee and the FDA has put into place for everything else. Just don't use BSE source materials.
	The fact that it is a moving target is completely correct, but it is a moving target, but since industry isn't using those materials anyway the target can move all it wants.  It doesn't affect anything if industry continues to pursue it the way we have been told.
	DR. FELDMAN:  To answer the question that was raised regarding other products besides vaccines at the Center for Biologics all therapeutic proteins are made from recombinant DNA technology and most therapies are made using culture methods which imply culturing amino acid broths of one sort or another. Maybe anything developed in the last year would not have any questionable sources of amino acids but certainly anything made in the last 10 or 15 years would and anything that was banked during that time frame would have sources of amino acids possibly unidentifiable at this point. That is certainly questionable.
	So, we are talking about hundreds and hundreds of products potentially.
	DR. BOLTON:  But still those are, the concern is that those are either excipients or more likely reagents in the production of the product which are then really mostly removed from the final product.
	DR. FELDMAN:  Actually I wouldn't even say that those could be considered as excipients because if it was an excipient it would have gone in the final product which would have had a shelf life of at the most maybe 2 years. So, we are talking about reagents at this point used in the production of the final product.
	DR. BOLTON:  It is a minimal risk on top of a microscopic risk of something that is sitting on the shelf for the last 2 or 3 years.
	DR. FELDMAN:  I think it is freezer for the last --
	DR. BOLTON:  I think we have to be careful not to get carried away with these extremely low levels of risk.
	DR. CLIVER: I am okay with what I just heard but of course there is a good deal of the consumer advocacy public out there that would be very upset about the recombinant DNA used in the production. This is a can't win situation. I do not subscribe to the I think all-too-prevalent notion that public health is best served by maintaining an adversarial relationship between industry and regulatory agencies.  My feeling is this is a partnership and in the present instance we have seen that depending on how you interpret the advisories from earlier industry has taken voluntarily a course that we now say is very reassuring.
	Now, we can turn around and tell FDA that whatever industry is already doing you are supposed to say now has regulatory status. Don't change. You have got to keep doing it but that is kind of saying that in totalitarian society everything that isn't prohibited is mandatory.
	We are in a situation where industry has done very well without regulatory pressure and I am not saying that we cannot advise FDA to institutionalize that, but I think  we should recognize that industry has in its enlightened self-interest a considerable stake in the public health, and they have made some moves that are laudable, and rather than saying, "Do you still beat your wife?" I think we should be saying, "Yes, they can. They did, and maybe we don't need yet another regulation."
	DR. EWENSTEIN: I think we are sort of beating on one point here, but I think the point that was just raised by the agency is one that we haven't really addressed, and that is if there is material that came from the ruminant source and got into the manufacturing process 5 years ago, 3 years ago, even last year from one of the 20 percent of the manufacturers that we don't get to hear from, what do we think about the risk there, and I guess since we don't know anything about the manufacturing process we can only extrapolate from the processes that we heard.
	So, I think what they are asking for is some sort of guidance in that situation. I think we all sort of see which way, you know, things are moving and the manufacturers are already moving in that direction for a variety of reasons, but I think it is this sort of look back question that is sort of implied in two and three and four which we were told we could answer or not at our discretion, and I would like to hear us discuss that.
	I feel like from what I know about the biochemistry of PRP scrapie or TSE infectivity these processes that we heard were pretty robust, and the risk I would agree with you must be pretty small, but I think we should make sure we have a consensus on that because I did hear some other experts on the Committee talk about the risk of hydrolyzed peptides and maybe we need to sort of think about that question more precisely.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  Is there the equivalent of an Underwriter's Laboratory who independently looks at products and assays them for proteins and for purity or is this all done basically by the company?
	DR. BOLTON:  My understanding is this is all done by the companies to validate and quality control their products. I kind of doubt that there is anybody that would have the money and the incentive to do that.
	We have done many amino acid analyses of PRP over the years. I hate to say that we have never taken the hydrolysate and injected it into an animal to see if there was any residual infectivity. I think the problem always comes back to these hydrolysis procedures are not perfect. They certainly, the whole intent is to harvest as much  in terms of individual amino acids from protein as you can but still there are small peptides that probably survive. 
	The likelihood of any significant amount of infectivity surviving just the initial hydrolysis procedure is extremely low. Bob, I don't know if you as an independent person wanted to comment on that, but it seems very unlikely to me that this would survive.
	PARTICIPANT:  For one thing you are working at over 100 degrees. So, it is hot, and 100 degrees in just plain water is not totally effective but it does have some reducing effect but you are in hydrochloric acid, and I didn't catch what the normality is, but my guess is it must be around one or better.
	DR. BOLTON:  No, it is six -- 
	PARTICIPANT:  It is really hard for me to believe that there is much survival. I would think that the danger would be not so much in the process but in cross contamination and whether the process is secure in that regard or not could be an issue.
	Both David Taylor and I have talked about the problem of material escaping even Autoclave temperatures by virtue of drying on surfaces and I think that could be an issue here, too, you know if you have got something that doesn't actually get exposed in hydrolytic conditions; you could have some infectivity escaping through but again you are taking it through a purification process and the actual mass contribution must be extremely small, and so it would have to be at a very low level.
	DR. MC CULLOUGH:  There is another minuscule part of a minute problem that I would like just to call to the Committee's attention but let me say that I do not propose doing anything about this, and Drs. Stroncek and Leitman might want to comment or disagree with me, that is the kinds of novel cellular therapy products that are generated these days for patient treatment such as manipulation of bone marrow for transplantation, activation of peripheral blood lymphocytes and others where we are creating novel cellular therapy products for patients and then to the issue of material that would have been produced over the years that may still be out there. I mean we have bone marrow and cellular products in our freezer that were collected 10 and 12 years ago, and so some of this material, some of these were even processed with bovine serum albumin and material that isn't even indicated for human use. 
	So, it is possible that there are cellular products in storage that will be used in patients that were processed with some of these kinds of materials. I think this is again such a minute issue I am not proposing that any change be implemented to deal with this.
	Also, it may not be practical because these materials are usually  very uniquely prepared for a particular patient, and so it would not be medically justifiable to discard something that is the only product that you might use to treat a patient when the time comes.
	DR. STRONCEK: Somewhat I think I agree both with what Dr. Leitman and Dr. McCullough have been saying. The risk of amino acids is really very small, but the potential harm if we are wrong is much worse than with blood products because you know liquid blood products have a reasonable shelf life. They are not around much more than a year and yes, there is a problem with the plasma derivatives if something were contaminated because they do hang around but we track them pretty well, but with amino acids all the culture media we use for all cellular products, you know, we are making peptides for vaccines. So, it is conceivable if cell lines, you know, if this were a problem with these amino acids we would have cell lines and patient material infected for years. Everything would be infected.
	DR. BOLTON:  Again, I would just like to remind everybody that infecting cell lines with prions is not an easy task and it is not something that is likely to stay around for very long unintentionally.
	Suzette?
	DR. PRIOLA:  I would just like to make comment. I think it gets back to what Bruce mentioned and that is there is not an awful lot but there is data available that shows that infectivity in the prion diseases is associated with larger sized aggregates of PRP and that the soluble, the normal form of PRP which is about 25,000 daltons is not that I know infectious no matter how you get it, even if you try to separate it from the PRPSC fraction. It is not infectious. So, the size cutoffs that were described to us in these manufacturing processes are way below that 25,000 daltons. 
	As to the issue of peptides I don't know of any instance outside of one transgenic mouse  model where a PRP peptide has ever been shown to be infectious. So, that to me points to excluding even 6000 and 1000 molecular weight peptides.
	DR. LEITMAN:  We have heard a lot of very good discussion.  Maybe we could return to Question 1, and the first slide says, "Current manufacturing processes and control methods."  The current methods we heard described to us by the two major manufacturers are what the FDA is asking us to consider I think in Question No. 1.
	Are we ready for a vote?
	DR. BOLTON:  I am not sure because the current manufacturing process doesn't involve any bovine material. So, I mean the source material used is not bovine. The manufacturing process, I guess we could vote on that.  I am not sure it makes sense to do that.
	My sense is that the Committee is one, not interested in having BSE countries be the source of bovine source material for amino acid production.
	My sense is also that we encourage the manufacturers as they have done to shift to non-animal sources but we have not suggested that that be required and I guess the third thing that I sense is that, and this may be wrong, and you will tell me if I am wrong, that we are not particularly interested in doing recalls on products that may have had bovine source materials for amino acids in the past that are currently on the shelf.
	Now, am I right or wrong in this assumption?
	DR. LEITMAN:  You said, "Non-ruminant." I think we got non-ruminant rather than non-animal.
	DR. BOLTON:  There was one suggestion at one point of non-animal.  No, I would take non-ruminant. That would be fine as well. Again, I think my sense is that that would be encouraged but not something that we would suggest as a requirement.
	DR. CLIVER:  Ruminant is maybe the half a loaf approach but if we are going to say, "Animal," or even if we are going to say "Ruminant," let us purposefully exclude milk and perhaps some other specific products that are pretty well cleared of suspicion. Clearly you are not going to specifically go to a BSE country to get milk  to make whatever bovine product you might want, but all the same this is not a risk material and as such while it is an animal product chicken feathers are another. 
	If we just generalize we don't want anything from animals in there I think we may catch some stuff from that net that we don't want.
	DR. ROOS:  Just adding onto your summary data I think we are urging companies not to use ruminant or animal material as a source for amino acids and if they do it would be from a non-BSE country that we would like some validation with respect to that material.
	Second, I guess with respect to the shelf issue what I would say is that I am comfortable at the moment with what I have heard of the  purification procedure.  My guess is that the materials that we are talking about here that might have amino acids from BSE countries are ones in which there is a lot of dilution and the ones that may be difficult to easily replace in other ways and what I would suggest is if there are particular issues with some of those products that the FDA alert us to those and we could examine them on a more individual basis because I could see potentially that there could be a concern about one or another product but at least at first glance I don't think I am going to lose sleep about this.   I think they have a pretty good purification partition. They are starting with material that is probably reasonably safe and they have a huge dilution factor, but if there is something out there that we should know more about and talk about, fine. I think the Committee has a role and could help out.
	MR. BLACKWELDER:  I am a statistician, and we haven't been looking at any data or talked about planning any studies today. So, there really hasn't been much for me to talk about and at the same time it seems then that there is, unless there is a very strong reason not to do this that there is no evidence to suggest we should change anything or break new ground, and I think much of what has been said is in that same vein, and I believe your proposals of a few minutes ago pretty much are in that vein. That is a reasonable principle.  I would like to suggest whatever recommendation we have.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  I want to say exactly the same thing. I think we are beating it to death right now, and your summary was perfect, and we can answer this question I believe very accurately.
	DR. BOLTON:  We are good at beating things to death, and we should do what we are good at, right?  
	Other discussion?
	I am just trying to actually recollect what it was that I said which is not always easy.
	DR. LURIA:  I agree with that as well, and with all due deference to FDA, can't we just vote on what you proposed?  I think that these questions are actually quite complicated.  It gets to current manufacturing. It gets to minimize, all these difficult terms.  I think you put forward a good summation of what most of us think. Why don't we endorse that and leave it at that?
	DR. BOLTON:  We all understand what it was that I said.
	DR. EWENSTEIN:  I was going to say that I think we need to, you know if this is a yes or no, I think we can have that little addendum there about the what ifs, but if this is a yes or, then I think to be consistent with what the Committee is saying and with what you summarized we would be voting no on this which is to say that we don't want to make an exception for amino acids but that we want the general policy about not sourcing from BSE countries to be in effect for amino acids even though we feel comfortable.
	DR. BOLTON:  Okay.
	DR. EWENSTEIN:  And then the other issue is going to come, having all that in our heads, but then No. 2 to try to translate what you said into the answer to No. 2, it would be that under most circumstances we would feel that the risk/benefit ratio would favor continuing to use the products even though they may have come in contact with these ruminant-derived amino acids that they shouldn't have in the last few years. We would not be asking for a recall. So, I think we could get through Questions 1 and 2 with what you said, with what you summarized.
	DR. BOLTON:  That sounds like an excellent plan. What I will do then is call for a vote on Question No. 1.
	No, you are not going to ruin my perfect plan, are you?
	DR. FELDMAN: Only if you want me to. I was going to state that when I gave my presentation I mentioned that I had three questions for the Committee to focus on, but we would certainly accept any revisions or modifications to those questions and what you have proposed is perfectly acceptable to us.
	DR. BOLTON:  Good, then anarchy rules as usual.
	We will vote on the first question and I will try to summarize the other points, and then we can vote on those either individually or together.
	The question is does the Committee think that the current manufacturing process and control methods utilized by manufacturers of amino acids can minimize the risk to allow bovine-derived amino acids from BSE countries to be used as reagents and excipients for the production of pharmaceutical products, and now we will take the vote.
	Let us do a name vote.
	DR. FREAS:    We would like to do it by name vote for the record, and we will vote in the order in which we are sitting at the table.
	Dr. Roos?
	DR. ROOS:  No.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Ewenstein?
	DR. EWENSTEIN: No.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Piccardo?
	DR. PICCARDO: No.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Crawford?
	DR. CRAWFORD: No.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr.Belay?
	DR. BELAY: No.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Williams?
	DR. WILLIAMS: No.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Nemo?
	DR. NEMO: No.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Gambetti?
	DR. GAMBETTI: No.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Blackwelder?
	MR. BLACKWELDER: No.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Stroncek?
	DR. STRONCEK: No.
	DR. FREAS: Dr. Bolton?
	DR. BOLTON:  No.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Lurie?
	DR. LURIE: No.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. DeArmond?
	DR. DE ARMOND:  No.
	DR. FREAS:  Ms. Walker?
	MS. WALKER: No.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Priola?
	DR. PRIOLA: No.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. McCullough?
	DR. MC CULLOUGH:  No.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Leitman?
	DR.LEITMAN: No.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Cliver?
	DR. CLIVER:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Ferguson?
	DR. FERGUSON: No.
	DR. FREAS:  And I would also like to get the industry representative's opinion.
	DR. PETTEWAY:  No.
	DR. FREAS;  Okay, so, there should be one yes vote, Dr. Cliver. There should be 18 no votes and no abstentions and the industry had a no opinion.
	DR. BOLTON:  Okay, very good. So, now, I will try to summarize what I think I was saying, point No. 1 that we would recommend that ruminant source tissue not be used from any BSE country.  Does that sound correct?  Should we vote on that?  Let me package all these things together.
	Secondly, we encourage, we recommend that the FDA encourage the use of non-ruminant source material preferably non-animal source material.
	Third, the FDA ask for validation of processes to produce amino acids when ruminant tissues are used as a source material for production of amino acids and four that the FDA not recall products currently in, would you say in use or having already been produced where they might have been produced with or contain amino acids that were produced from ruminant source materials, that the FDA ask for validation of processes for production of amino acids where ruminant tissues are the source material or something to that effect.
	DR. DE ARMOND:  Do you have to specify the validation for PRP scrapie?
	DR. BOLTON:  Yes,  validation for removal of infectious prions or PRP scrapie as a surrogate marker.
	DR. GAMBETTI: Mr. Chairman, point of  clarification. When you talk about Point 4, I guess, not recalling products you referred to amino acid that had been already purified and ready to be distributed by the manufacturer or, also, to amino acids that are on the shelf and eventually will be used to make the final products. If I understand correctly there are amino acids of ruminant origin on the shelf and those may be used or our recommendation should deal with this kind of product whether we recommend that it would be used for the final product or that one that has not been used yet we stop.
	DR. BOLTON:  No, my intent and correct me if I am wrong in the sense of the Committee was that products that are already manufactured from amino acids would not be recalled. Amino acids that are unused that were derived from bovine tissues from BSE-affected countries should be removed and destroyed. Does that sound right?
	DR. EWENSTEIN: That sounds right. I would just leave the last point off Point 4, because I think that is going to come up when we vote on No. 2. 
	Oh, we don't have to vote on No. 2? Okay.  That is really the answer to No. 2 which was that I guess we would all be voting yes or most of us would be voting yes that there would be certainly circumstances maybe almost all circumstances where the risk/benefit ratio would favor being able to use that product even though suspect amino acids had  been used in the manufacture.
	DR. BOLTON:  Let me turn it around and ask the question is there any member of the Committee who is concerned that there is a product that should not be used given that it may contain amino acids or may have been produced using amino acids that were derived from bovine source tissue from I guess potentially a BSE-affected country?
	Even with my glasses on I don't see any. So, there really are not at least products that we can think of at this time --
	DR. EWENSTEIN; No, the only reservation I have, and I think the FDA would be obviously on top of this is that we have heard about two very robust processes. We don't know about all the processes that are used to make amino acids that might have gone into products that are out there, but I think we can rely on the FDA to extrapolate from what we have heard and not go too much beyond that because one could imagine less robust processes might have been used by other companies.
	DR. BOLTON:  In the interests of saving time why don't we vote on the first three, leave this recall of products part out for now and I think we could move on then, except that I see more hands rising all the time here.
	Lisa?
	DR. FERGUSON:  Two points, and I will try to run through them very quickly. On the first point we are recommending that the product not be sourced from ruminants, I feel like we need a caveat in there somehow for such things as milk proteins, gelatin from hides or from hair. There are certain things out there which have been demonstrated or widely accepted not to present a risk. So, if we can either have that caveat implicit or write that in there, I think we need to do so and I would make just one side comment. My understanding of the casein or the milk protein I think most of that actually is produced in Europe. So, if that is a component of anything that would primarily be sourced in Europe. Anyway, the second question that I had is actually just a clarification on the third point I believe it is about the validation, and correct me if my understanding is wrong.
	What we are saying in Point 1 is don't use ruminant source from a BSE-affected country and Point 2 we are saying, "Try not to encourage or try to encourage non-use of animal proteins anyway," but then Point 3, if you are going to use animal protein which would be from a non-BSE-affected country we are saying validate the process.
	DR. BOLTON:  Right.
	DR. FERGUSON: Okay, my concern there is that we are being inconsistent. We are not asking for validation of a process for anything else where we are sourcing bovine material from a non-BSE affected country, are we?
	DR. BOLTON:  No.
	DR. FERGUSON:  So, why would we choose this specific product which I think we are all accepting is a pretty minimal risk anyway to start to make that recommendation?
	DR. BOLTON:  That is a good point and now things are getting more complicated all the time.
	DR. CLIVER: Lisa already took care of the milk thing I was going to raise but let me say another kind word about feathers. I really think when we talk about animal products that we have to include some exclusions or else we are going to get ourselves into areas where we don't need to be, or have any reason to be.
	DR. BOLTON:  Good point.
	DR. WILLIAMS: Actually those are the two points I was worried about, too, the casein situation and then the situation of broadening things out to be animals. That certainly includes birds.
	DR. BELAY:  Can you review Item No. 3?
	DR. BOLTON:  That we would ask the FDA or recommend that they encourage the use of non-ruminant source material now with the exception and I guess I also added and/or even non-animal source material and now we have exceptions for milk, hair, feathers and some other specific items.  Does milk, hair and feathers pretty much cover it?
	DR. FERGUSON;  Hide, gelatin or anything associated with hide or hair.
	DR. BOLTON:  Is the list now going to get so long that it doesn't make sense to have that recommendation?
	DR. FELDMAN: If I may there are a number of points that need to be brought to the attention of the Committee. One, milk, milk-derived proteins or components, hair, feathers, for instance, I believe are already excluded from the regs and so should not be of issue here under these in this conversation.
	Secondly, in terms of validating processes for all bovine-derived products from non-BSE countries, fetal calf serum from the United States and from New Zealand and Australia is the bovine-derived product from non-BSE countries and is used in pretty much everything that the Center for Biologics regulates and there is no way of validating that purification process.
	Thirdly, the term "validation" itself needs to be clarified by this Committee if it intends to use it so as to give us some guidance as to what level of validation would be appropriate and if you start going into hide and hair and other components the list is going to get too long and too involved and it would simply be beyond the ability of the agency right now with the resources that it has to start regulating and changing policy and changing products on the basis of those parameters.
	Now, I throw it back to you.
	MR. BLACKWELDER: I am thinking not on the basis of science but on kind of trying to be logical that especially from the last few things, Dr. Bolton, maybe we should just have the first one of your recommendations because who knows what suggesting that animal tissue not be used, what areas that is getting into that we are not thinking about.
	DR. GAMBETTI: How about using this second point to recommend and not to use ruminants in general, whether they are from BSE or non-BSE countries, in other words as a general recommendation?
	DR. BOLTON:  That was the general recommendation. However, then we end up with the exceptions for hair, hide, gelatin; what did I miss, feathers, fetal calf?  Fetal calf is not a source for production of amino acids though.
	DR. GAMBETTI: In the case of the ruminants.
	PARTICIPANT:  I would ask you please, we are not asking for reconsideration of the safety of gelatin which we have considered at length, of gelatin per se which we have considered at length in the past.  In 1997, we issued guidance saying that bovine gelatin regardless of whether it is from bones or hides will not be considered acceptable in injectable, implantable or ophthalmic products, and we stand by that position. We are concerned about three things, one the possibility that a hide would be contaminated with high-risk material and two the difficulty in distinguishing after the fact between what is hide gelatin and what is bone gelatin.  Of course, our level of responsibility for childhood vaccines is extremely high. I don't anticipate that we will change that policy.
	DR. BOLTON:  I am confused now.  You have left me definitely confused. Is that --
	PARTICIPANT:  -- hide gelatin versus bone gelatin we are asking you not to consider that question.
	DR. BOLTON:  But as a source material for amino acid production?
	PARTICIPANT:  No, for gelatin.
	DR. BOLTON:  Okay, I think we are here only dealing with what tissues might be used as source material for production of amino acids following acid hydrolysis. So, I don't know that anybody would use gelatin as a source material. I am not sure, but I guess Lisa is nodding her head yes.
	DR. FERGUSON: Yes, actually I think one of the manufacturers said that that is -- they are currently using porcine gelatin.
	DR. BOLTON:  Okay.
	DR. ROOS: I think there are two reasons why we suggested  validation. One was perhaps as a little bit of a discouragement to manufacturers and second for the potential of increasing the safety here and first really intrinsic in what David Asher said is that gelatin is not exempt and it is actually the source material for these amino acids at times.
	We left the issue of validation very vague, intentionally so, and I think I would let the FDA decide what kind of validation might be required. In other words if it turns out it is gelatin material maybe they want more validation than if it is some other starting material from the cow.
	I think, also, validation could be just assuring everyone how amino acids are actually involved in the preparation, how big is it. So, I am comfortable with keeping it as a vague recommendation that some validation be placed if a bovine product from a non-BSE country is source material for amino acids.
	DR. BOLTON:  I see a non-Committee member that would like to say something. 
	Bob, briefly?
	PARTICIPANT:  I would like to revisit my remarks earlier and that is it would be very reassuring I can tell from listening to the Committee to actually have a scientifically approved basis for making this decision. Everyone has some residual discomfort with the idea that maybe these things won't work and there is a good reason for that.
	Who would have expected that you could get survival after 138 degrees for 2 hours in some of David Taylor's experiments?  Not very much survival but there is some. We do know that 100 degrees by itself is not totally effective.  Low pH  by itself is not totally  effective. It seems to me when you put them together you are likely to get something that is very effective, but it hasn't actually been done. I haven't done that experiment, and I don't know anyone else who has, and it is a very straightforward experiment. We should at least, it seems to me you do have a right to ask for at least that, that a simple experiment like that be done to reassure everybody that actually the premise that we are all presuming is true is in fact true.
	DR. BOLTON:  I think what  I would like to do now is at least take a vote on that first summary --
	DR. WU:  Excuse me, could I request a clarification on behalf of CDER?  Because of No. 1 asking that bovine-derived, specifically indicating that it is ruminant, so, I would like a clarification that a recommendation based on No. 1 is the ruminant.  
	DR. BOLTON:  We have already voted on Question No. 1 as worded by the FDA and that specifically says, "Bovine derived amino acids from BSE countries."  We voted that the manufacturing process does not minimize the risk to allow those to be used. However, we are now considering the question of whether or not the Committee would recommend that the FDA not allow ruminant source tissue from BSE countries in the manufacture of amino acids.
	DR. WU: Okay, so, it is for the bovine derived.
	DR. BOLTON:  Correct, and I think I would like the vote on I guess what would now become the second question  but is part of my four-part summary which we may only get to one part of, and that is as I stated that the Committee recommends to the FDA that ruminant source tissue not be used from BSE countries as a source material for production of amino acids by hydrolytic procedures or something to that effect.
	DR. BELAY: Are we putting the exemptions like the milk exemptions for example in that question?
	DR. FERGUSON: I understood FDA is saying that that is sort of inherent that the milk exemptions are sort of inherent, correct?
	DR. BOLTON:  This is ruminant source tissue from BSE countries, not non-BSE countries. Okay, so this would not, I don't know if it would include --
	DR. BELAY: What I am asking is currently we are for example, I think importing milk products from BSE countries.
	DR. BOLTON:  Okay, I see.  So, those are inherently excluded already anyway.
	DR. FERGUSON:  That is what I thought I heard Gerald say is that that is already excluded from their restrictions anyway. So, my point earlier perhaps was unnecessary.
	DR. FELDMAN:  Just to clarify milk is already excluded and is allowed to be used in the production or used for drugs in general, is considered a very low risk or non-risk tissue as determined by science and this Committee and should not be a subject of these discussions unless you feel that you want to change your opinion.
	DR. BOLTON:  And what else falls into that category?  Gelatin?
	DR. FELDMAN: Tallow derivatives, hides from live animals or not hides but hair from live animals or I believe it is hides from animals where the heads were not -- not for injectables. That is a different issue. So, I guess it is just milk products and hair from live animals.
	DR. LURIE: Back to the question from the gentleman from CRH about the ruminant versus cattle. It does actually seem very logical to me No. 1 to say no ruminants from countries that have BSE-infected animals. I mean it is a little bit unfair to French sheep I guess is the way I see it. It is almost as if French sheep are being tarred by the fact that they have got some infected cows. It doesn't seem completely logical to me.
	DR. BOLTON:  There is some logic in there, Peter, and that is the question of whether or not BSE can be passed on to sheep and be masked as scrapie and yet actually have the infectivity range, the host range of BSE which would then possibly be infectious for humans. 
	PARTICIPANT:  The Committee reviewed that a couple of years ago.
	DR. BOLTON:  Okay, can we do this without it becoming extremely complicated? The question is should the Committee recommend to the FDA that no ruminant source tissue with the exceptions noted previously which I hope somebody has written down be used from  BSE countries for the production of amino acids.
	Can we take a vote?
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Roos?
	DR. ROOS:  I think the answer is yes.
	I don't try to sway your vote, but I just want to make sure that I am answering this appropriately.
	DR. BOLTON:  A yes answer is that we are recommending that ruminant tissues not be used.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Ewenstein?
	DR. EWENSTEIN:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Piccardo?
	DR. PICCARDO: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Crawford?
	DR. CRAWFORD:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Belay?
	DR. BELAY:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Williams?
	DR. WILLIAMS: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Nemo?
	DR. NEMO: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Gambetti?
	DR. GAMBETTI: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr.Blackwelder?
	MR. BLACKWELDER: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Stroncek?
	DR. STRONCEK:  I think this is the question we voted on last time, but yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Bolton?
	DR. BOLTON:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Lurie?
	DR. LURIE: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. DeArmond?
	DR. DE ARMOND:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Ms. Walker?
	MS. WALKER: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Priola?
	DR. PRIOLA: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. McCullough?
	DR. MC CULLOUGH:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Leitman?
	DR. LEITMAN: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Cliver?
	DR. CLIVER: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr.Ferguson?
	DR. FERGUSON:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  There were 19 voting. All 19 voted yes.
	Oh, excuse me. Now, we may go to opinion from the industry.
	DR. PETTEWAY:  I will give an opinion this time and that is when you are talking bovines it is very simple, I think, and very straightforward but as you expand it to ruminants I am going to agree with Bob Roher(?) and there is a couple of things. One is understanding exactly what the process is and the validation of the process and the other is generating relevant data to make the decision on and we don't have relevant data for either one of those. So, I think that you just need to keep that in mind when you are making these sorts of decisions that there is a way to generate relevant data that can be useful in making these kinds of decisions.
	DR. BOLTON:  Very good. I see that it is after three. So, we should adjourn now.
	We do have, I guess, the consideration now as to whether we want to deal with this question of encouraging non-ruminant source material.  Perhaps that is a moot point. It may not be worth all the hassle and back and forth that we would have to do to come to some conclusion and with respect to the recalling of products perhaps we could defer to the FDA's question No. 2 as Bruce has suggested earlier and that question is if not Question 1 which we voted no on does the Committee feel that there are circumstances where the risk/benefit ratio would still be in favor of a subject receiving the product where suspect amino acids had been used in its manufacturing process. As I think we discussed there will be circumstances, probably most circumstances where the risk/benefit ratio would still be in favor of the subject receiving the product. So, perhaps we can take a vote on that in lieu of going through specific recall recommendations and I think at that point the FDA will clearly have a sense of what the Committee thinks.
	So, Bill, let us take a vote on Question No. 2 as posed by the FDA.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Roos?
	DR. ROOS: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Ewenstein?
	DR. EWENSTEIN: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr.Piccardo?
	DR. PICCARDO:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Crawford?
	DR. CRAWFORD: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Belay?
	DR. BELAY: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Williams?
	DR. WILLIAMS: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:   Dr.Nemo?
	DR. NEMO: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Gambetti?
	DR. GAMBETTI:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Blackwelder?
	MR. BLACKWELDER: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Stroncek?
	DR. STRONCEK: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Bolton?
	DR. BOLTON:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Lurie?
	DR. LURIE: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. DeArmond?
	DR. DE ARMOND:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Ms.Walker?
	MS. WALKER: Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Priola?
	DR. PRIOLA:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. McCullough?
	DR. MC CULLOUGH:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Leitman?
	DR. LEITMAN: I just want to clarify it is not any circumstances. The Committee discussed all circumstances. We feel this is not an issue. So, my vote is yes but just to clarify it for the FDA we don't have any difficulty with that. So, it is all circumstances.
	DR. FREAS:  Cliver?
	DR. CLIVER:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Dr. Ferguson?
	DR. FERGUSON:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  And the industry opinion?
	DR. PETTEWAY:  Yes.
	DR. FREAS:  Okay, there were 19 yes votes on that question.
	DR. BOLTON:  Does anybody want to change their vote if we change the wording from any to all?
	DR. FREAS:  I think everybody is satisfied with that. 
	DR. BOLTON:  I believe we have come to the end of our day's work.
	Question 3 then becomes moot and the FDA did not ask us to deal with Question 4.
	So, we will reconvene tomorrow morning at 8 a.m., to deal with topic 3 and it is a much better job of keeping on time today than our last meeting.
	I thank you all.
	MR. BLACKWELDER:  Could I change my vote on one of those?
	DR. BOLTON:  As long as the meeting is in session.
	What would you like to change your vote on?
	MR. BLACKWELDER:  The ruminants from BSE countries. If I am correct it seems like the science is that we don't have evidence for saying that. At least that is what a couple of people have suggested. If that is correct I would like to change my vote to no.
	DR. BOLTON:  We could debate that ad nauseam, but if you would like to change your vote I think that is fine. So, that would be from a yes to a no.
	This meeting stands adjourned until tomorrow morning at 8 a.m.
	I thank the Committee members and the members of the public for attending.
	(Thereupon, 3:13 p.m., a recess was taken until 8 a.m., the following day, October 26, 2001.)