HL: Well, that's what's confusing, then, because scientists want to use the buckyball for a drug-delivery device because of it's special properties. At the same there are FDA trials involving buckyballs there are toxicity studies involving buckyballs.

Teague: Exactly. They're all going on.

HL: So, to the general public first being introduced to buckyballs, which do they pay attention to? Are they wonderful drug-delivery devices or are they potentially toxic, or both?

Teague: That's right. They could be. But until we have data, we have really honest-to-goodness data, we have no basis for a decision. As you were talking about earlier, people can get very afraid, but the FDA is not going to approve those as a drug-delivery device until their data can substantiate that they are not going to be harmful to the body.

HL: Being a former general-interest journalist, here's how I can see things happening: The FDA comes out with something about buckyballs as a drug-delivery device. A reporter on the science desk at the Podunk Journal is asked to do a story on it. He does a LexisNexis or Google search, sees that story about the buckyballs and fish, and ties the two together. Then you've got another public relations problem.

Teague: I think that's a very realistic scenario. Somehow it has to be communicated to people that fish and mammals don't react in the same way. That's one thing. How you get those kinds of things across in a valid way without sounding like we're trying to whitewash something is (pause). I think you have to be just as factual as you can (another pause). I don't know how else to deal with it, other than trying to be factual as you can and saying fish and mammals are different, you breathing something is different from you swallowing something as the fish does.

HL: I don't envy your job. These are the issues you're going to be dealing with.

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