A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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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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2004-10-05 00:00
Anthony S. Fauci
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.
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Oct. 6, 2004 - Trip to Duke to honor retirment of Ralph Snyderman as Chancellor. White House conference call at the airport in Raleigh-Durham on way back regarding the influenza vaccine issue.
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Oct. 7, 2004 - Trip to Duke to honor the retirement of Ralph Snyderman. Gave talk on Emerging Infectious Diseases. White House conference call on Influenza issue (see above). Incredible amount of media appearances: radio, TV, print. As much as I have ever done.
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Oct. 8, 2004 - Big time Congressional Hearing on influenza vaccine problem before the House Government Reform Committee. I testified with Julie Gerberding and Lester Crawford of FDA. More media, White House Conference calls, and Jim Lehr NewsHour to finish the day.
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Oct. 9, 2004 - Front page story in the Washington Post saying that the UK regulatory authorities told our FDA about the problem at the end of August with the implication that the FDA failed to act in preparing for the shortage. Acting FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford explained on our regularly scheduled White House Conference Call that this is misinformation. As we (me, Julie and Les) have stated all along, Chiron kept reassuring us that there was a problem with about 4 million does due to contamination with Serratia marcescens. Never did anyone say to FDA or CDC (nor did Rino Rapualli say to me) that there was a serious enough problem to suspend licensure. John Kerry came out with ugly statement saying that the Administration is covering up.