my recording just ended. so it was about 35-40 min long. i have to listen again to catch waht they even said!!!
Rrrr, when you listen again...make sure you use the "7" key on your phone anytime you need to hear something again. It backs up the recording 30 seconds each time you push it (like TiVo!). I must have pushed that "7" button about 50 times!
Anyway, for others in the U.S. or Canada or whoever can call this 866 number...the call is definitely worth listening to, and I just tried it again at 6:15pm and confirmed that you can still start it at the beginning!
For those that can't call in now, hopefully they'll have the recording posted to the NIH website soon? I'm fried right now, but if possible I'll post some of my notes soon. My basic impressions are that Alter and Lo are taking this the most seriously, and there was major CYA going on from Monroe and some of the other members of the FDA group that are supposed to be verifying the blood safety.
The reporter questions were a frustratingly mixed bag of informed questions greeted with lukewarm/confusing answers and some really dumb questions that gave Monroe an easy out about the lingering "confusion." One of the most encouraging things I heard was this from Dr. Alter: He said he has another study of 1000 blood donors (with results expected soon) which can help demonstrate transfusion linkage (if any) and the impact on the current blood supply. He is doing this by testing frozen samples pre-transfusion to their blood currently.