Well, in 1985, ‘86, I… I was a… a co-chair of a big meeting we had in Switzerland on, well, they wanted to call it the eradication of hepatitis, but I… I think we changed it to the possibility of eradication. And I think on the face of it, you know, if you vaccinate enough people, which is happening, and re-vaccination may be required, but let's say you maintain vaccination levels, and you start treating people who are already infected, and you break the mother-child transmission by vaccinating newborns, then, you know, conceivably, it'll go away. But there's a very interesting question about whether you want to push for eradication. The… the eradication of smallpox was feasible, because there's only human-to-human transmission, and… and it's human to… of human transmission with pretty close contact — it's not respiratory spread, you know, it's close contact. And the… and they had a really good campaign and they… you really… which went through various stages, but finally they tried to find the last few cases, and then they kind of put a wall around… around them with vaccination processes. And that was pretty effective. But, you know, for years now, they've been trying to eradicate polio. And the Rotary International, as you may know, has taken a particular interest in that. And they have really pushed it enthusiastically; highly organized, they're very, an international organization, and they're very well organized. And they've made that a kind of goal. But they have, you know, they've eliminated it from the United States, pretty much. And they've eliminated it from other places. But the… the argument is, well, if it's anywhere in the world, you know, it can spread. And then you have to ask the question, do you want to spend all your money and effort on getting rid of those last few cases – something that would be very desirable — or, do you want to say, okay, we know how to control it, we've got it pretty well controlled; it's not perfect, but then, nothing's perfect. So, why not do something else? And I've spoken to them at Rotary to ask them if they want to consider directing their considerable energy and resources towards doing work on hepatitis B, and I've elicited an interest. I must say, I haven't sort of pushed it very far, but I think I may, again, I met, I've spoken to several people from Rotary. It's a remarkable organization, you know their health-orientation towards public health is really commendable. So that, I… I think that's about it. My guess is there will be more discussions about it.

One of the problems with hepatitis B is that it's never generated the kind of interest that AIDS has, for example, although, probably a lot more people have died from hepatitis B than have died from AIDS. And I've seen some formulations that this is still the case. It probably is, there's probably more people dying from it. But somehow or another, it's much less dramatic. And it’s… it affects the same people, essentially, the same population groups, more or less, not… it varies from country to country. So our, my money, the practical thing, I think, is to try to continue to extend it and I've tried to do that in China when, my small bit is never, it's always hard to tell what actual impact you had. That trip I took to India, I think that had some role, but things move slow. And India, now, they're really pushing it forward. So, I… I, eradication, fine, but in the meanwhile, let's work towards control. It's... one of the things I've learned, is don't do things you can't do. You know, it's not going to happen. Don't do… there's something else you can — but I wouldn't despair. But again, there can be interesting consequences when there isn't any more hepatitis B virus around. We don't know what they are. And you know, I'd like to find out. For example, I told you about this funny grouping of bacteria that are all related to the same susceptibility gene. Okay, let's say you vacate, you remove hepatitis from that class, that classification of bacteria — what's going to happen to the other ones? Are they going to increase? You know, the world's a very… nature is very dynamic. You change one thing, something else happens, like with Paul Bunyan and the radiators. So, we, and I'm not... that's not an argument not to go ahead — don't misunderstand — it's an argument to find out more and to investigate things at the population level. And investigate with, well, in field studies, not just in the laboratory.