There are a number of data sources that would have been irretrievably lost unless there were investigators who were actually deployed, looking out for preserving the data for later review.

With a war ongoing, we need to be able to provide fast feedback for troops in the field as well as to people making decisions about research priorities.

As you might imagine, the institutional review board is a fairly sophisticated committee with experienced research and regulatory people who meet on a regular basis. We, of course, did not intend to deploy any such committee to Iraq.

Now we're still seeing patients who are dying of hemorrhagic shock from penetrating torso injuries that would not respond to a tourniquet, so that's an example of where our research priorities should be. They should be oriented toward those particular types of injuries and treating shock from those injuries because we don't have a good product for that. That's the sort of important information that we need to get out of this type of analysis.

Scent of old books a mystery; a secret port of the dreamers.

Candidates have to look and see if, realistically, there is a way to get there.