CONCLUSIONS  
     DR. SHAPIRO:  Thank you very much.  We very much appreciate
your second appearance here.  Thank you very much for your help.  
     Well, in view of the lateness of the afternoon, we have run
rather later than I had hoped, I am going to ask the committee's
indulgence and forego any further discussion of this topic at
this time.  
     Eric, you will just have to excuse me.
     But in any case -- but I really -- perhaps those of you who
will be here tomorrow can certainly take that topic up again.
     I want to thank our guests especially.  
     But before adjourning I promised that I would give Zeke a
moment to say a word or two since this is in all likelihood his
last meeting as a formal member.  
     DR. EMANUEL:  It is absolutely my last meeting.
     This is my lasting meeting and I wanted to take a minute.  I
am resigning from the commission not for any reason of
dissatisfaction.  Quite the opposite.  As has been alluded there
has been a major trade between the NIH and NBAC.  You got the
better of the deal.  Eric is coming to you and I am going to the
NIH.  
     DR. SHAPIRO:  We also have a future draft choice.
     (Laughter.)
     DR. EMANUEL:  This is my last meeting and I wanted to -- I
assured Dr. Shapiro I would take only a few minutes. 
     First, I wanted to thank the staff for having put up with a
zillion requests and all sorts of irrational demands and doing it
with grace and very promptly under difficult circumstances. 
     Mostly I did want to thank Dr. Shapiro for being a wonderful
chairman and for leading us without bamboozling us with any
agenda, and for really, I think, helping us along. 
     I also do want to thank my fellow commissioners.  
     I want to reiterate something that Eric said earlier in the
day, that this really is a wonderfully collegial group.  We have
a lot of big people with a lot of very strong and well developed
ideas that do not always agree as we have seen today.  And yet
there is, through all that diversity, an attempt -- first of all,
a respect for each other and, second of all, an attempt to come
to some kind of constructive consensus.  We saw that in the
cloning report and we have seen it today in these two different
reports.  
     It is really marvelous to see especially in a day when -- an
era where cross fire is more the model rather than, I think, this
constructive consensus building and trying to move forward in a
wonderful way.  I will miss that and greatly appreciate it and I
hope it is something that is preserved with future selection of
commissioners because I think it really is a great model. 
     If I could take one more minute, which is as I walk out the
door my little look at the future.  I think we have spent a lot
of time today on it and it was number one on Eric's list, which I
spent two weeks in England and part of what I was doing is
thinking about where would I like this place to go.  I really do
think the IRB issue, this protection issue, actually getting it
to work is really the key issue.   It is not sexy in a way but in
the nuts and bolts it is the issue.  
     We keep resorting to the IRB for all sorts of reasons
suggesting it is a pivotal function.  It is doing a pivotal
thing.  We cannot get rid of it and we need it more.  Yet there
are excessive demands on it.  It was built 20 some years ago and
not built for the current era.  We know that it is only going to
get worse.  The NIH budget is going to go up.  More research is
going to be done.  We do not have a good understanding of how it
works in practice as you have heard today. 
     Most importantly and distressing in my opinion is the public
has no idea that it even exists and that actually they are being
protected.  So I think actually if this commission focused in on
that problem it would be of great, great benefit to the whole
country.  I think this issue of where protection sits is one part
of the puzzle but only one part of that other puzzle. 
     So I really do greatly appreciate having been able to serve
a year and a few months with all of you and it has been a
wonderful experience for me and I thank you very much and look
forward to whatever future interactions we have.
     (Applause.)
     DR. SHAPIRO:  Zeke, on behalf of myself and all the
commission members and the staff, thank you for all the
contributions you have made not only to our reports and to
ourselves, and to our work but to each of us as we worked
together over this time.      So we look forward to interacting
with you on some basis that is appropriate as we go ahead.
     With that, we are adjourned.
     (Whereupon, the proceedings were adjourned at 4:33 p.m.)