A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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July 19, 2004 - Appeared on the Jim Lehr Newshour defending the USA position on PEPFAR. Steve Lewis from the UN was my "opponent" and we duked it out over the bilateral approach of PEPFAR versus the multilateral approach of the Global Fund. I said both are good and working. He feels that the USA should put all of its money into the Global Fund. He also did not understand the need to have some sort of approval for generic copy drugs (see above). Everyone told me that I appeared cool and collected while Steve was shrill.
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July 21, 2004 - Two visits to WH today. The POTUS invited me to be at the signing ceremony for the BioShield Legislation in the Rose garden. I was asked to go up on the stage for the photo with the POTUS and the VP as well as Tom Ridge, Congressmen Chris Cox and Waxman, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Senators Ted Kennedy, Bill Frist among others. Michael Allen of WH Legislative Affairs was my advocate to get me on the platform. The White House protocol women (?name) wanted Julie Gerberding on the platform (even though she had nothing at all to do with BioShield) since there were no women there and she bumped me. Michael insisted and they compromised by putting us both up there. The POTUS, VP and Senators were very nice with me. I now know all of these people very well. In the afternoon, I briefed Carol Kuntz. Ernie Takafuji accompanied me. Carol is great, but she is going through one of her periodic periods of sadness and anxiety about her CML even though she is in a crisp remission on Gleevec. I intermittently give her private psychotherapy and I did so that night.
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July 22, 2004 - Testified with Secretary Thompson and Julie Gerberding to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) on Public Health preparedness, surge capacity and medical countermeasures. Present were Chairman Judd Gregg, Ted Kennedy and Lamar Alexander. It was a very friendly hearing and very complimentary to me and the others.
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July 23, 2004 - West Wing - Had individual photo op with VP Cheney together with the entire "team" that worked on BioShield. Many people there: Stewart Simonson, carol Kuntz, Scooter Libby, Sally Canfield (DHS) (she just announced that she is leaving Tom Ridge and going to work for Speaker Hastert), Mark McClellan, Ken Bernard, Michael Allen, Brenda Becker, Sharon...(Sen. Gregg's staff), Noreen Hynes, Seth... (Noreen's husband), Vince Ventimiglia (Sen Gregg's Committee Staff). I will provide full list later. Very happy occasion. Again, VP was very gracious towards me.
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2004-08-11 00:00
Anthony S. Fauci
August 11, 2004 - Met at EEOB Room 283 with Carol Kuntz and Bruce Miller and Dorothy.... to discuss tentative plans to determine whether IL-4 gene inserted into monkeypox would have the same effect as IL-4 inserted into mousepox virus, i.e. it would suppress the immune response enough to allow lethal disease in the animal. This relates to concerns that terrorists will genetically engineer variola with IL-4 and so override vaccination and cidofovir. Carol wanted to know which of several options for experiments I would favor. A White Paper was drawn up by the Office of Homeland Secrurity (Ken Bernard) with the various options. Of note, I had previously briefed Frances Townsend in the White House Situation Room a couple of weeks ago (not recorded above) on the same topic. I favor Option #3 which is to conduct the research on IL-4-altered monkeypox in monkeys and do it as classified research. However, we should announce that we will be conducting such experiments so that people do not get suspicious that we are totally hiding things. We would keep the design, details and results classified since if we found out that it did work in monkeys , but did not yet have a countermeasure for it, then we would expose our vulnerabilities.
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Sept. 1, 2004 - Had a interesting day. Flew by helicopter from the Pentagon to Fort Detrick to visit USAMRIID with Deputy Secretary of DoD Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Winkenwerder, and a number of other DoD and DHS senior staff to hear presentations by Gen Lester Martinez-Lopez and others regarding why the DoD should support the planned new Biodefense Research Campus at Ft. Detrick. The Army wanted me there since they know that I am an articulate advocate of their cause. The meeting went very well and I finally got a chance to meet and intensively discuss with Wolfowitz.
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September 13, 2004 - For the past few weeks, I have been involved in a number of briefings of Carol Kuntz and Stewart Simonson regarding Biodefense and the concern about the emergence of an H5N1 bird flu that has been smoldering in Asia (Thailand, Viet Nam, China, Taiwan, etc) with jumping of cases from chickens to humans. President Clinton had quadruple bypass surgery at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital related to unstable angina this past week. I contacted Senator Clinton's office to get his private e-mail address to send him my personal best wishes. Today, I had an official briefing at the White House for Carol Kuntz and Bruce Miller (her deputy) on research plans and strategy for countermeasures for "Genetically Engineered Microbes". The presentation was very well received. Carol gave me a "redlined" copy of the Bioshield Legislation that was signed by President Bush and VP Cheney as a special gift from them to me due to my work on the development and passage of BioShield.
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Oct. 4, 2004 - Meeting in the Situation Room of the White House to brief Ken Rapuano (Deputy to Fran Townsend) on the IL-4 - monkeypox experiment that is being proposed as a classified experiment to be performed by DHS. I presented the rationale behind the experiment. Also present were Carol Kuntz, Ken Bernard, Stewart Simonson, Maureen McCarthy, Gerry Parker, et al. Although NIAID will not perform these experiments, Fran Townsend wanted to make sure that I did the briefing since she trusts me. The plan is for me to make the same presentation to Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld soon after the election.
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Oct. 5, 2004 - Historic day today with the UK regulatory agency suspending the license of Chiron to ship out their influenza vaccine to the USA because of issues related to the inspection of the plant in Liverpool. This is a huge issue for the USA since Chiron was scheduled to supply about 46-48 million doses or about 50% of our yearly requirement of 100 million doses. Only Aventis Pasteur (50 millioin doses) and Medimmune (2 million doses of Flumist) are available. We heard about this abruptly this AM as we (Julie gerberding and I) were getting ready to testify at House Hearing on Thimerasol in Influenza vaccines.