Thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony for the record.

My name is Meryl Nass, M.D., and I have worked for the past twenty years as an emergency physician and internist in community hospitals in the northeastern US. I have also studied many aspects of bioterrorism since 1989. I am the person who first demonstrated, in 1992, that one could investigate an epidemic retrospectively, and prove that it was due to biological warfare, using Rhodesia's 1978-80 anthrax epidemic as a model.[1]

The Washington Post reports (below) that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced plans to enroll 60 young children in Duval County, Florida - infants to age 3 - exposing them to pesticides to study how the children absorb poisonous chemicals!

In this experiment children will literally be relegated to the status of human guinea pigs. This experimental abuse of children demonstrates what the chemical / pharmaceutical industry buys when it "contributes" funds to government agencies, public officials, scientists and academic institutions.

We are witnessing the unraveling of a system that was intended to ensure that marketed drugs met high safety standards; that physicians were informed about potential, serious adverse drug effects - so that they would prescribe judiciously; and that the integrity of the scientific literature was preserved. But that system has been hijacked by the drug industry - which has infected medical practice and medical research with detail men and informercials that make false claims while manipulating partial data to conceal adverse drug effects.

Scientists' Presentations at AHRP Press Briefing in Conjunction with FDA Hearings:

• Peter Mansfield, MD, University of Adelaide (Australia), Director of Healthy Skepticism discussed the illusion of potency in light of the meta-analyses in the British Medical Journal (which he co-authored) and the Lancet.
  Dr. Mansfield's power point presentation
• Peter Breggin, MD, a psychiatrist with a sub-specialty in clinical psychopharmacology, who was among the first to recognize adverse antidepressant drug reactions
  Dr. Breggin's presentation
• Lawrence Diller, MD, a pediatrician and family therapist who has evaluated and treated more than 2,500 children
  Dr. Diller's presentation
• Stefan Kruszewski, MD, a clinical and academic psychiatrist, and Associate Medical Director of Physicians' Health Programs, Pennsylvania Medical Society
  Dr. Kruszewski's presentation
• David Healy, MD, Director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine and Visiting Professor, University of Toronto,