Mission Critical Update | July 17, 2026

[00:00:04]Hello there and welcome to this week's mission critical briefing with Dr. Neil Barnard.

[00:00:11]As always, we've got some really good updates for you this week and you'll be glad that you tuned in to keep updated on PCRM's work and also learn about how your donations are being put to work uh saving animals and saving people. I'm Betsy Wson, PCRM senior vice president of development and I'll be your mission critical host today, July 17th, 2026.

[00:00:39]Last Friday on Mission Critical, I announced that it was the final day of our spring matching gift campaign and let me thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming through in such a big way.

[00:00:56]Your donations unlocked every single dollar of the $500,000 matching gift challenge. And that is going to help ensure that our clinical research continues to provide the evidence that we need to make plant-based diets a priority in healthcare.

[00:01:15]And the campaign also supports our educational programs that are getting the word out to millions of people every year.

[00:01:25]And think about this. You're not only helping us get people healthy. Every time someone chooses a vegan meal, we're lessening the demand for animals who are suffering horribly on factory farms.

[00:01:43]And the movement would take a giant step backwards if PCRM weren't able to keep educating and pushing for change. So again, on behalf of all of us here at PCRM, thank you. Thank you for partnering with us to make the world a better place.

[00:02:06]Please let us know you're here. The chat is open and it's a way that we get to see who's joining us today and we love to connect with you. So, jump on in and let us know by posting your name and you where you're joining from today. And if you choose everyone from that chat drop-own menu, then we'll all be able to see your posts. And we have staff also in the chat who are there to answer your questions throughout the briefing and also just love to say hello. So, please jump in.

[00:02:43]Well, Dr. Barnard is going to talk about something that is on every news channel and all over social media. And I mean, probably know what it is. It's this parasite that's wreaking havoc across the United States. And we're also going to hear from Shagun Krishna about the fascinating work that she's doing to advance research on heart disease. And rounding out today's presentations, we'll be welcoming Stephanie Mcburnett and Food for Life instructor Karina Pierce. To get us pumped up for this year's Let's Beat Breast Cancer campaign. So to start us off, let me welcome uh founder and president of PCRM, Dr. Neil Barnard, with his mission critical update.

[00:03:30]>> Well, thank you, Betsy. Thanks to all of you for joining us today. If you haven't yet gone in the chat, please do let us know that you're with us and and where you're watching from. Uh, by the way, a big shout out to Dr. Hammond. Thank you for joining us, but also thank you for being such a huge part of ICNM, which is coming up in August. I can't wait to see you there, and thank you for for helping the medical students to really begin what for many is going to be a life-changing experience. So, thank you for that. Okay. Uh Betsy mentioned that there's something in the news and let me share my screen and I want to talk with you about it.

[00:04:11]Okay, hope you can see this.

[00:04:14]You may have heard about cycllosphora uh at Taco Bell in Michigan, in Indiana, in Ohio, in Kentucky, in West Virginia.

[00:04:26]uh people got sick. Um and it turned out that something was coming from a place called Taylor Farms, which is in the US, but it's also in Mexico, and they had contaminated lettuce. They got into people's tacos and whatnot, and made a bunch of people sick. Uh more than 1600 people fell sick between May and yesterday, I guess. Um and particularly in these five states, maybe elsewhere, too, 94 were hospitalized. and it was traced um late yesterday the government released that they believe it came from Taylor Farms lettuce. So I want to talk a little bit about that that because there's a lot to be known and a lot of important issues here. First of all, what is psychospor? It's a protozonean and you can ingest the little protoonean eggs so to speak and you don't get sick right away. couple days later, maybe a week or 10 days later, uh after exposure, you start to get symptoms. Um that's important because it's hard to nail down what the cause was if it was something you ingested 10 days ago. So, it took some time for the pattern to be clear what foods where was that actually consumed. Um but the symptoms are digestive symptoms like diarrhea and cramps, nausea and vomiting. you lose your appetite, you lose weight, you're fatigued, you feel terrible, you might get a a fever. Um, but the question then is so where does it actually come from?

[00:05:54]Now, when we think about food born illnesses like salmonella and so forth, we often think, well, those are intestinal intestinal organisms. They've got to come from a chicken's intestine.

[00:06:05]Well, the chickens are going to say, nope, cycllospora didn't start with them. Or ecoli comes from cows.

[00:06:12]Salmonella comes from cows as well. But cows are going to say, "Don't blame me either." Well, let's blame Taco Bell.

[00:06:20]No, Taco Bell says it's not their fault.

[00:06:23]Um, well, is it the lettuce? No. Lettuce doesn't want to be blamed for it either.

[00:06:27]Lettuce doesn't have an intestinal tract. So, where did this intestinal organism come from?

[00:06:37]It comes from humans.

[00:06:40]It's not in chickens. It's not in cows.

[00:06:42]It let and plants never have an intestinal tract. They don't have intestinal prozzoa. It comes from humans. Yes, that's right. It comes from humans and no other animal. It lives this cycllospora is a protozonean. These are little microscopic one- cellled animals.

[00:07:00]They live in the small intestine and specifically in the lining of that intestine in the epithelial cells inside. And so they are then shed and it typically isn't passed directly from person to person. You know the typical thing where uh somebody's got salmonella and they could give it to somebody. Uh no it it has to the organisms when they're passed even if a person doesn't use good hygiene those organisms are not infective for several days because they have to go through some behavioral changes. Um, however, let's say you have contaminated water in the country where you live, contaminated with human waste, untreated sewage, and let's say that contaminated water might be used for irrigation.

[00:07:48]Not very pleasant, but that's where it can then get on plants that never had an intestinal tract and never had an intestinal organism of their own. That's where it comes from. And that can happen in the United States. It can happen overseas and then those products are brought in and infect people. So what do you do? Well, with regard to fruits and vegetables, don't shun them because we need them. They're the healthiest foods there are and we don't want to blame it because it's not their fault. They didn't ask to get contaminated. Okay? If you buy them frozen, they're fine. You get a bag of broccoli fuettes, no problem. You get anything frozen, anything canned, anything cooked, all fine. No problem. And if you get something that was contaminated, but at home you cook it, it's going to be it's going to be fine. the prozzoa cannot survive at cooking temperatures. But you're going to have salad or fresh berries or something like that.

[00:08:37]If it's salad greens, remove the outer layers. These the guidelines I'm going to give you come from the CDC and the FDA. Um they'll say remove the outer layers of the greens and then thoroughly wash the rest. Even if you bought it in a bag and it says it's pre-washed, take that with a huge grain of salt.

[00:08:54]Wash it again. Um however um you will hear people saying uh you can rinse them in vinegar or vinegar water solution or use various sanitizers. They don't really work very well against these particular prozzoa. They have a little shell that says I'm not interested in your sanitizers. It doesn't do much to them. But if you just physically the process of washing them dislodges a lot of them. Um now I'm having a little bit of a deja vu with all this. I have to say Taylor Farms um has been around a long time and it's the world leader in salad ingredients and a lot of uh produce not only United States, also Canada, also Mexico, also Western Europe. However, Taylor Farms was linked to a cycllospora outbreak in 2013.

[00:09:46]That's right. Um and and the reason is that they're the biggest one. Um, so if they've got any wrinkle in the supply chain, you're likely to hear about it somewhere. Now, luckily, um, these don't happen terribly frequently and given the size of the population, your the chance of it happening near you is relatively small, but it is there and it does mean that we've got to do what we can to make sure that project products are hygienic.

[00:10:14]Okay. Um, a bigger risk for everybody is the unhealthful foods that are served every day everywhere.

[00:10:22]I'm talking about meat and dairy products and so forth. And we just had up until the 4th of July here in Washington DC on on our mall um there were different states being represented to talk about their their products. And I have to say, you probably heard about the controversy that people really weren't going to see the the demonstrations very much, but if you did, you would have been shocked because although there has been a number of ef there have been a number of efforts to promote healthy eating lately, if you're from Kansas, you want to talk about beef uh or pork, or if you're from Wisconsin or Florida, New York, you want to talk about dairy products and so forth. And so there are all kinds of fried foods and high cholesterol foods.

[00:11:05]um up on the mall and um the Washington Post noticed and so did uh Stephanie McVernett who is here today and I want to thank you Stephanie for um writing this great air uh letter to the Washington Post which they just printed I believe today. So let me stop at that point and turn it back to you Betsy.

[00:11:29]>> Thank you Dr. Barnard. And I'm I'm so glad that you are bringing up this whole um uh issue with the lettuce. Um I've heard it I've heard this discussed on so many news programs and um really I think they're scaring people into not eating the lettuce, not eating your fruits and veggies. Um you of course none of us want to get sick, but never have I heard them talk about the source of it. And I thought it was probably contaminated by animal agriculture runoff or something like that because we know contaminated water is often used to water crops. But um it's uh yeah, thank you for setting the record straight and um it is not hopefully not going to be the summer of no salads, which I heard one of the anchors on the Today Show saying like he doesn't like salads. So thank goodness it's the summer of no salad.

[00:12:29]And hopefully that's not the case.

[00:12:31]>> Well, you brought up a really important point is that animal agriculture is really responsible for a huge number of contaminations. Not this one. Um, but uh the sooner we can get rid of animal agriculture, the healthier everybody will be, not just the fat and cholesterol, but the salmonella, the ecoli, and the things that are responsible for most of the outbreaks that we're seeing. So, >> yeah. Well, thank you for the news and we're going to have you back at the end of our presentations.

[00:12:57]>> Okay. Thanks, Betsy. Thank you. And um thank you for joining us in the chat today. Tony in New Jersey. Good to see you. Um Rich in Maryland is here.

[00:13:11]Allison is here in Pennsylvania. I know a lot of you are dealing with the smoky conditions. Um so we sympathize with that. Um Tom in Missouri. We've got Yusha joining from Germany. Um, Debbie, a Food for Life instructor from Florida is joining us today. A Lissa in Oklahoma. Please, if you haven't put your name in the chat yet, it's never too late. We love to see who's joining us. Um, well, let's see. Our next presenter is Dr. Shagun Krishna. She's a PhD toxicology expert working with our team to end animal experiments. and she's joining us today from India to talk about one of the ways that PCRM is helping science break free of relying on animals for research. And thank you for joining us, Dr. Krishna.

[00:14:03]>> Thank you, Betsy. And I'm just going to share my screen in a moment. And okay.

[00:14:23]Let me know if you could see my screen now.

[00:14:27]>> Yes.

[00:14:28]>> Okay. So, good afternoon everyone. My name is Dr. Shagun Krishna and I'm director of toxicology at PCRM. And today I would like to share some news about how PCRM is helping shape the future of chemical safety testing. And if you are a regular on mission critical, you know that for decades, animal testing has been the default for evaluating whether chemicals and drugs are safe. But we now have better science. So today I'm going to show you how our team is working with international regulators to turn these scientific advances into global standards that can protect people and animals.

[00:15:17]Um okay.

[00:15:23]Yeah. So let me start with a problem that we are trying to solve. And cardiotoxicity simply means damage to heart and cardiovascular system by chemicals or medicines. Yes, you heard it right. Some drugs can save lives but at the same time they can damage the drug as well. Sometime causing irregular heartbeats or uh even like uh blockage in artery that could lead to heart attack. So today animal studies are the default way to evaluate these risk related to heart and cardiovascular system and as I mentioned earlier animals are poor predictor of human outcome. They don't always respond they they don't respond the same way as human hearts. So these tests don't predict what happens to these chemicals and drugs in human. And that's why we are leading a new OECD project to develop an animal free road map road map for evaluating the herd safety by using these human relevant signs.

[00:16:32]And why this is important as I mentioned every year thousands and thousands of chemical are used to test chemicals for their potential heart toxicity. These studies are expensive, time consuming, consuming and most of the time they fail to predict harmful effects in human. But at the same time we already have technologies that uses human cells, advanced computational models to provide better information. So the challenge is not that the science doesn't exist. It already exists. But the challenge is creating a regulatory framework that allows to use these better methods so that the animal test could be replaced and that's exactly where we are focusing our efforts.

[00:17:23]So in this slide I'm going to give you an example of some of the methods that we are using in place of animal. So these technologies are termed as new approach methodologies and we are using the human heart cells in the laboratory to grow in a in a tiny herd cells to see that how these chemicals are going to affect the hurt and not only this as I mentioned that uh all the animal studies are time consuming and there are alternatives available. So there are high throughput screening which as the name suggest they could evaluate thousands of chemical much faster than the traditional studies. We are also using computational methods and the artificial intelligence based methods to predict the toxicity of these chemicals to the her. So what we are doing finally we are actually integrated all these evidence streams into one scientific framework and I would like to emphasis that the the methods that I just mentioned they are not at all theoretical. They have been validated by FDA. They have been validated by international regulatory bodies and a lot of leading pharmaceutical companies are already using it for some of the drug-like chemicals.

[00:18:43]So our our project focuses on one critical type of heart toxicity and that's one important point that I would like to clarify because when I say cardiotoxicity it actually means a lot of complications within the heart and the cardiovascular system and the chemicals they could damage the heart in different ways like they can affect the heart rhythm they can cause blood vessel injury they can cause blood clotting problem and a lot more and our project focuses on a specific issue which is related to the abnormal electrical activity inside the heart and it actually leads to irregular heart rhythm and in severe cases it could also cause cardiac death that means like heart failure and we chose this endpoint because the science is already strong and it allowed us to build a solid foundation and we plan to expand these workflow to other forms of cardiotoxicity as well.

[00:19:46]So this brings us to centerpiece of our work, the IATA. What is IATA? It's actually integrated approaches to testing and assessment. Don't worry, it seems complicated. You don't have to understand it all. But you could think of IATA as a regulatory recipe. So it basically tells the regulator that exactly what evidence they need to determine that whether a chemical is is safe for humans or it's unsafe and if it is unsafe then at what doses it's causing the harm. So instead of relying on one animal study, our framework actually combines human cell testing, all the advanced laboratory models that I already described earlier, computational predictions and multiple line of scientific evidences. And our goal is very simple. So that we could present something uh we could present the regulators a decision framework based on human biology rather than animal biology. And our team plans to submit this framework in OECD by July 2027.

[00:20:57]So what makes this work especially exciting is that it goes way beyond just one research project because we are helping translate cutting edge science into international policy. Uh I attended the OECD meeting this year in June and uh so we are working directly with the OECD and we are also collaborating with all the scientists from academia industry and government all around the world. And this is a picture where you could see me with my uh with regulators from Greece, European um EU, European Union and also our OECD colleagues. And so together we are building an international guidelines that regulators can trust and use. And uh so once adopted this framework has the potential to improve human safety, reduce animal science and harmonize the regulatory decision across all the member countries of OECD. And so again I I know that most of you know OECD. So OECD is a a collection of 38 member countries and if a test guideline is accepted by OECD then all the 38 member countries are going to adopt it.

[00:22:13]So in other words, we are not just developing better science, we are actually helping change how chemical safety is evaluated worldwide.

[00:22:23]And then at the end, I would like to thank all of you for your continued support because the work I have shared today doesn't happen overnight.

[00:22:30]Developing new scientific methods, working with international regulators, it takes years of collaboration and sustained commitment. And every step forward that we take from advancing human relevant science to reducing our reliance on animal testing is made possible because people like you believe that this future is worth building and we still have a long journey ahead. But I'm very sure that with your continued support we will help create a future where better science protect protect both people and animals. And again thank you everyone and thank you Betsy.

[00:23:08]H thank you Dr. Krishna and uh we definitely uh all believe that it's worth fighting for and working towards uh having a a world that's protecting of animals and of people and stay stick around because we're going to bring you back uh after our last presentation. And uh hello to friends joining us from all over. Um, we've got Uganda. We've got friends joining from Hong Kong, Canada, and France. Um, hello Dr. Egan. Thanks for joining. And hello, Dr. White. Um, never too late to put your name in the chat. We'd love to see who's here. Well, our next presenters, dietician Stephanie McBurnernett and Food for Life instructor Karina Pierce, have been working with our Let's Beat Breast Cancer campaign for years, and they are working to educate as many people as possible about how to lower cancer risk.

[00:24:03]And that campaign really takes off in September and October, but there is activity happening year round. So, it's never too early to get pumped up. And let's uh start this off with uh Stephanie. Great. Thank you, Betsy. As Betsy said, I'm one of the lead coordinators of the Let's Beat Breast Cancer Campaign here at PCRM, and I'm I'm here to give a a good check-in and um an update today. So, as many of you know, the Let's Beat Breast Cancer Campaign is a partnership between the Physicians Committee and renowned breast cancer surgeon Dr. Christy Funk. The campaign spreads the message of four evidence-based steps. So, eating a plant-based diet, uh, exercising regularly, limiting alcohol, and maintaining a healthy weight, that doing those four things can dramatically reduce your risk of breast cancer and of recurrence. And the importance of this message became even more clear when we did our survey last year in which over 80% of women reported that their doctor never mentioned nutrition or any of these four steps.

[00:25:08]So, every fall at PCRM, we host drum rallies around the world. Our food forlife instructors teach cancer prevention classes. We co and we coordinate a global media campaign. We also partner with policy makers, celebrities, and influential voices that can help amplify this message.

[00:25:29]Speaking of celebrities, stay tuned for a big announcement next month.

[00:25:34]So, our drum rallies bring communities together to raise awareness, share life-saving information, and inspire action. These events are joyful, powerful, and deeply personal. Thanks to your support, we're able to provide educational materials, sponsor local events, support community leaders, and reach more people with information that truly makes a difference. So since the campaign has begun, we've hosted a 178 rallies across the world and the campaign has reached millions through our events, our media news articles, and our social media channels. So today, I'm excited to welcome rally host and food for life instructor Karina Pierce. She's gearing up for her third rally in Princeton, New Jersey, and she's going to share how she brings this campaign to life and inspires her community to make some noise for breast cancer prevention.

[00:26:29]All right, Karina, you have the floor.

[00:26:32]Thank you so much, Stephanie. I'm just going to share my screen.

[00:26:43]Okay, it's giving me a slightly different view this time. That's okay.

[00:26:49]There we go.

[00:26:55]Okay, we're all set. Thank you so much, Stephanie. Um, I'm really excited to be working with you all again. We were so excited in New Jersey to have Dr. Barnard on April 13th present his Power Foods diet, and we've really been using that event to just build more community and get people at different events. Um, I'm happy to be a building healthy communities leader as well in Princeton for a monthly potluck and I'm here to share on behalf of my partner Susan Schneider and also my partner Natalie Mitchum what we've been doing for our let's be breast cancer rallies. So, we really feel our main goal is spreading the word about the power of plant-based healthy foods to improve and inform people about breast health. And we feel every community member has the right to know what the evidence-based research really says. This is an issue near and dear to my heart. When I was eight, I lost a really dear aunt. And uh I know that it's an important topic that touches all of us.

[00:27:59]So here we are in Princeton. Let's start with how we found this location. Here we are our first year 2024.

[00:28:07]Uh we we felt really lucky through research, Susan and I, to land on Albert Hines Plaza. It's named after an African-American neighborhood leader and community builder. It's the site of a lot of really energetic community events. Uh it's also accessible. Uh it has restrooms, easy parking, and lots of restaurants, some of which you can see in the back. So in this photo, you can see everyone who joined. We had community leaders, Mayor Mark Freda, we had our building healthy communities Princeton monthly potluck members, uh, some drummers are in there, too. And then just the best part, a lot of community members that happen to be in the area and grabbed a sign and stayed for the big the big picture and for, you know, a little bit of dancing to the drummers.

[00:29:01]Let's take a look now at our team that makes it all possible. So we generally have a couple of people who stand up and say opening words. On the left you can see that we had Dr. Gia Merllo. She is dual certified in psychiatry and lifestyle medicine. She gave our our main address and did a wonderful job. We generally have a breast cancer survivor and you can see Mayor Mark Freda holding the proclamation there and then my partner Susan Schneider who's also a food forlife instructor. In the second photo, uh you can see our other partner, Reverend Dr. Natalie Mitchum. She's an amazing partner because she's a registered dietitian, a food for life instructor, and she also is a pastor of a local African Methodist Episcopal Church. Um so she gave our main address the second year and uh it's really really thrilling to have her with us because uh she is able to speak from the pulpit about the power of this message and that's really unique. After our second class we our second rally we realized we needed a next step a powerful next step. So after our second rally in 2025, Pastor Natalie and I taught nine food for life classes and that is also thanks to many many donors.

[00:30:24]Uh as you can see some of the materials that Stephanie was referring to all thanks to your generous donations. Uh we instead of giving package goods by the second year, we just said let's make gorgeous piles of fruit. And that attracted people in and they wanted to hear more about it and everyone took a piece of fruit or two home. It's a really powerful visual message about the power of healthy food to change uh breast cancer risk. So that always helps. And then now let's get to the drummers. So we have our drummers for a lot of reasons, right? They build incredible energy. They make everyone notice the square or the location and they just really help us make this beat, you know, we this let's beat best breast cancer just more uh obvious to the people around us. It's very exciting.

[00:31:15]It's been a challenge to find drummers from time to time. I think the goal uh the gold standard is having uh high school drummers. Uh but sometimes our schedules didn't mesh. So, we got creative and uh on the left side you can see that we have been working with Tony from Positive Music Entertainment out of Trenton and he works with uh children uh living with economic disparities and teaching them how to drum. So, what a great cause that we are supporting by rolling him in. Uh as you can see, every year he adds a couple of things. He has these beautiful pink flumes on his team and he added the Elmo head or the Elmo mask and there's a conga line behind him. I'm not sure if you can really tell but he is going he is circling the square and with that Elmo mask uh we had more children dragging their parents to the square than ever before. So that was that was really really exciting. Uh and over on the right you can see that we also work with uh Cybol School of Music and that is um a a music education center and they bring all of their youth drummers and we invite the community to bring drums as well and we beat breast cancer in that way as well. So and oh you can also see all the way over on the right with Reverend Natalie, we've got Dana Zarello from PCRM and she was a huge help last year, a huge help. So this year we're going to meet from 5 to 6:00 PM Thursday, September 17th. If you're in the area, we'd love to see you. Princeton is a really nice destination town. If you think you can.

[00:32:54]And we'll be in the Albert Hines Plaza also, uh, also, you know, commemorating that great leader. So, um, what I wanted to say about this is we also have a little bit of news. We were able this year to secure the Princeton University drum line and you see them in the photo here. That gives us a lot of connection into the community. So I've been working with eating houses which at Princeton is where many choose uh many students choose to eat their meals and some of them are plantforward. So we offered Susan and I offered a free class to them in October following this rally. We'll also be teaching classes again at the arts council in Princeton at the AM church with Pastor Natalie. And we'll be working hard on securing more special guests. I'd love to get the governor uh another local physician. And this year we'd like again uh Dr. Letterman uh and potentially his wife Alona Pulde, the doctors from Forks Over Knives to give the main address after the mayor. Uh, we're also amp ramping up our local media coverage. So, if you have any names, please email Stephanie.

[00:34:08]And if you're able to, please join us.

[00:34:11]I'll make sure I put the link in the chat. Uh, your donations make all of this possible. And we are reaching more and more community members of all ages.

[00:34:22]It's never too early. children, college students, high school students, it's never too early to teach what we all know and may even take for granted, right? The incredible knowledge that what we eat really has an impact on all of our health and especially hormonally based cancers like breast cancer. So, uh to wrap up, uh when Mayor Freda attended our first rally, he proclaimed a let's beat breast cancer day. We were so fortunate to capture that on tape and we would love to share that with you now.

[00:34:59][music] >> There will be an estimated 8,880 new cases [music] of breast cancer and 1,170 breast cancer deaths in New Jersey in 2024, according to the American Cancer Society. Choosing plant-based foods, exercising, limiting alcohol, and aiming for a healthy weight are four simple steps that reduce the risk of developing breast cancer or its reoccurrence. Now, therefore, I'm Mark Frereda, mayor of the municipality of Princeton, and the council of Princeton, County of Mercer, state of New Jersey, do hereby proclaim September 21st, 2024 as Let's Beat Breast Cancer Day in Princeton. And I encourage my fellow citizens to visit let's beat breastcancer.org to join the campaign and take the above steps to beat breast cancer.

[00:35:54][music] >> Let's beat breast cancer.

[00:36:03]>> Well, that was wonderful. Um Karina, Stephanie, um hold on. Uh uh Dr. Christa, come back and join us. I wanted to just talk to everybody. Um actually let me just start with you Dr. Krishna.

[00:36:17]Um when you were talking about the need to replace animals particularly in cardiovascular research I was thinking about the studies that we managed to stop recently at Wayne State University where heart failure was being studied in dogs year after year after year with no results. And your approach seems obviously humane. You're taking the animals out of every species. Um but it also seems much more rapid um in the the work that it's going to do. So I guess my question is um tell me how new this approach is. Is this a well tell tell me about >> this is very new. This is very new because cardiovascular diseases are really very complex and uh OECD doesn't have any international guideline or any test guideline related to any of the cardiotoxicity related end points or cardiovascular disease. So we are the first one to work on this and as I mentioned that we start cardiotoxicity is a broad term. We just started with the one issue that is irregular heart rhythm but we plan to expand it to all the issues related with the cardiovascular system. So this is like a novel and very innovative approach.

[00:37:30]>> Well beautiful and it's very exciting to the young scientists too. They don't have to be experimenting on dogs or rodents or anybody. they can do these really high-tech modern things that apply to people. Um Stephanie and Karina, um thank you for talking about the rallies and I guess so that everybody understands the each rally and you've done so many of them. Each one is a seed that then translates into social media posts and uh uh traditional media and then classes to follow. And it's wonderful to see all the the ripples that you're that you're sending out. Um, so my question for for either one of you, um, I guess is the is is it working? Um, is the message of prevention and healthy food is that catching on?

[00:38:12]>> Well, I'll take that one. Thank you, Dr. Barnard. Um, it is for sure. The powerful combination of the rallies plus the food for life classes and then monthly support I think from the building healthy communities potlucks is helping us see people change their lives. They're changing their diets.

[00:38:32]They're coming off medications. They're leading healthily health healthier lives and full of gratitude. So, thank you.

[00:38:40]Super. Well, that's it's wonderful to see and it's, as I said, it's great then to see all those people who are there multiplied by thousands and thousands and thousands with all the the social media and the regular media and everything that it attracts. So, good on you. Can't wait to see what happens this year. All right. Well, thanks everybody.

[00:38:56]Uh back to you, Betsy.

[00:39:00]Well, thank you presenters. This was such a good example of how we are putting PCRM donations to work. Uh changing the world, saving animals, and saving people. Um thank you everyone for joining us today and we will be here same time, same place next Friday for a brand new mission critical update. Now, thanks a lot. Have a great weekend.