he obtained his medical and doctorate degrees as part of an nih-funded medical science training program. he completed residency and neurology at stanford university. in 2002, dr. fox serve received an award from the san francisco neurological society for basic research analyst of the disease, and the 2005 john douglas foundation award, and he was a key member of the expert panel. >> thank you for that very kind introduction. i think that when time is limited, i want to really provide a different perspective about alzheimer's disease to you. i spend most of my time taking care of people with alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, and the other part of my time is really spent trying to find new treatments and new ways to diagnose alzheimer's disease and dimension. i think many of us in the clinical research community feel that while these are terrible times financially in this country and these are tough times for care givers, there's a lot of hope that we can really look to in the research, i think, and i believe, and maybe i am a bit optimistic, but i think there's a good chan

>> nih got $10.4 billion under the stimulus act.iehs, including our superfund program, got about a hundred and $90 million to conduct research under the stimulus act. however funding was about $9 million -- no, $11.5 million, excuse me. about $4.9 million of that was stimulus funding. >> i am confused. how much of the economic recovery act funds that went to nih is being dedicated to autism research? >> specifically, of the $190 million, about $5 million. our base funding in two dozen 9 -- in 2009, a4 was about $ million -- in 2009, was about $4 million. it is hard to say exactly because we do see autism as a priority and we are trying to increase our funding. >> i will hope that you will let us know. all of us here care about this.rat if you feel you could do more with more funding, let us know, because it is clear to me that we're coming along. we are narrowing down. maybe there is some susceptibility to certain chemicals and toxins because of certain genes or other factors. that is why, putting that together with our cluster bill

. >> now, you know that nih, national institutes for health or of health. >> national institutes of metal. >> they -- of h health. >> they just had within summary past couple of weeks they had a big meeting and they talked about how your mental state actually affects your physical health, correct? >> yes. >> were you there? >> i wasn't at that one, no. i was out of town, in europe. >> do you know whether they discovered anything new or were they just kind of ventilating this in the interest of public education? >> not having been there, i wouldn't want to declare anything, but it sounded like it was a group of people together to bring us up to date to where we stand on this. this is a valuable thing to do. >> are they sa saying that age doesn't mean the same thing 20, 30, 40 years ago? >> it's absolutely different. look at the way -- you see people in their 80's -- in fact, anthony store the other day, famous british psychologist who died at age 80 was giving a lecture at oxford at the university there. he wasne of the fellows. he was 80 years old and has continued to be active, writing b

>> i think this is part of our ongoing discussion with nih. in fact, there is a meeting happening right now with several of the agencies and long-term toxicity studies, and the design of those is one of the points under discussion. >> thank you. mr. kramer, there has been much criticism of the seafood sampling plan, particularly about the method of risk assessment. it is my understanding that the level of contamination with pah's , which is considered safe does not taken too vulnerable populations such as pregnant women and children, and this is because the assumptions within the plan calculates safe levels based on an average adult male body weight of 176 pounds. has the fda produced guidelines to ensure that children and pregnant women are adequately protected from contaminants that may be present in the seafood? >> the short response to that is that we believe that the levels of concern that we established for the reopening protocol are quite conservative and will be sufficiently protective for all populations. we also acknowledge that thes

>> i think this is part of our ongoing discussion with nih. in fact, there is a meeting happening right now with several of the agencies and long-term toxicity studies, and the design of those is one of the points under discussion. >> thank you. mr. kramer, there has been much criticism of the seafood sampling plan, particularly about the method of risk assessment. it is my understanding that the level of contamination with pah 's , which is considered safe does not taken too vulnerable populations such as pregnant women and children, and this is because the assumptions within the plan calculates safe levels based on an average adult male body weight of 176 pounds. has the fda produced guidelines to ensure that children and pregnant women are adequately protected from contaminants that may be present in the seafood? the short response to that thehat' we believe that levels of concern that we established for the reopening are quite conservative and will be sufficiently protective for all populations. we also acknowledge that these are valuable

>> i think this is part of our ongoing discussion with nih. in fact, there is a meeting happening right now with several of the agencieand long-term toxicity studies, and the design of those is one the points under discussion. >> thank you. mr. kramer, there has been much criticism of the seafood sampling plan, particularly about the method of risk assessment. it is my understanding that the level of contamination with pah's , which is considered safe does not taken too vulnerable populations such as pregnant women and children, and this is because the assumptions within the plan calculates safe levels based on an average adult male body weight of 176 pounds. has the fda produced guidelines to ensure that children and pregnant women are adequately protected from contaminants that may be present in the seafood? >> the short response to that is that we believe that the levels of concern that we established for the reopening protocol are quite conservative and will be sufficiently protective for all populations. we also acknledge that these are v

studies that nih has funded so far are overwhelmingly focused on treatment of service members and do not focus on families. a program i had applied for was canceled. for what ever reason, i think we are still not seeing as much attention to really trying to understand what families are experiencing, as much as we might, but there is attention thereto, which is that families are tired. they do not want to be treated like drops on a slide. it is annoying. i sympathize with that. i am part of the problem. but haditha know how to fix problems if you cannot understand what they are -- how do you know how to fix problems if you cannot understand what they are? i will close by talking about what we are doing, how we are responding to these challenges at the military family research institute. even though our name has research institute, for the last two years, i have been asked to put somebody else's money where my mouth is. we really try to practice what we preach. so, i started out as a researcher, and now i am also engaged in engagement and outreach activities, which is a really wonderfu

how much of the economic recovery act funds that went to nih is being dedicated to autism research? >> specifically of the one and $90 million, about $5 million. >> $5 million in addition to the $9 million? >> that is part of the $9 million. in 2009, it was $4.3 million. >> the base funding is about $4 million. you double the amount. without the funding, we go back to $4 million. is that right? >> it is hard to say exactly. we do see autism as a priority. we are trying to increase our mamount of funding. >> i hope you will let us know. if you feel we can do a lot more, it will have a little more funding here. it is clear to me that there are -- we are coming along. we are narrowing down. m.a.cthere may be set to build a surge in toxins. -- susceptibility to certain toxins. making sure the chemicals are safe before they are introduced. he was having a fairly clear path here to where we are going. arab the covers my questions. thank you. >> thank you both of you for focusing in on this issue. alibi to put my opening statement in the record in in go directly to questions if that is acc