A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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Sept. 30, 2009 - Wonderful day at NIH. POTUS came in the AM with the Secretary, Bill Corr (Deputy Secretary) and Francis. Marston Linehan and I showed him a lab in the new CRC. First Marston spoke about the genetics of renal cancer and then Francis spoke about the cancer genome atlas. I then spoke to the POTUS about the history of HIV research here in the Clinical Center. I spoke about how I admitted the first AIDS patients in 1981 and how they all died. I then spoke about the major advances in antiretroviral drug development and testing that has transformed the treatment and survival of HIVinfected individuals. I spoke about the recent results of the Thai HIV vaccine trial. He was very engaging, pleasant, funny but serious about the subject. He definitely now has fixed in his mind who I am. When I told him that I had been here since 1968, he joked that this must mean that I came when I was 11 years old. I had the opportunity of walking him back to his limo to drive around the corner to the entrance to Masur Auditorium. We had a very nice conversation. He knew that I was from NYC. I told him that my father went to Columbia and Megan is a 2TM4 year student at Columbia. He said "Ah, I knew there was something that I really liked about you". I told him about Jenny teaching in Crown Heights and he said that this was terrific. All around, he is an extraordinarily engaging person. I rode in the motorcade to Masur Auditorium with Sec. Sebelius. Obama gave a great speech in the Masur Auditorium. He explicitly mentioned me in his speech referring to what I had told him regarding progress in HIV/AIDS. The audience went wild over him. After he left, to return to the White House, I brought Sec. Sebelius to a patient ward 5SE and had a patient presented to her by Joe Kovacs. It was good to give her a chance to see a hospital ward and a patient. After this we took Sebelius to the Medical Board Room and various IC Directors made short presentations to Sebelius: Richard Hodes and Betsy Nabel on comparative effectiveness research (CER); me on HIV/AIDS; Tom Insel on Autism; Griff Rodgers and Betsy Nabel on obesity. All in all it was a great day for NIH. Obama is an extremely engaging person.
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Oct. 7, 2009 -- Went to White House to see Francis Collins receive National Medal of Science. When Obama came into the room, I was in the last row (first one he passed), he came over to me and shook my hand. Clearly he now recognizes me as ASF at NIH. Still major press exposure re: HIN1. I am daily on TV, NPR, print papers. The "ban" on me is clearly lifted as Jenny et al are now very comfortable with my talking about anything. Oct. 7 -- 10, 2009 -- Not unexpectedly, the people who are against the Thai trial are making a big stink (anonymously, of course) by leaking to the press that the original announcement on Sept. 24 of the 31% VE with a p value of 0.039 using a mITT analysis was not the correct analysis since the per protocol analysis is a 26% VE with a nonsignificant p value. Everyone knows that the ITT analysis is the gold standard. Nonetheless, these assholes are trying to invalidate the study by rumor milling the press. They got their information by unethically violating an embargo agreement that they had signed when the DoD (out of courtesy) briefed them on all of the data at the time of the Sept, 24 announcement. Clearly, the people involved are Doug Richman, Dennis Burton, Ron desrosiers, John Moore. I finally spoke to the press and had an article in the Sunday (Oct. 11) NY Times with ny picture explaining why it is much to do about nothing.
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Oct. 10, 2009 - Chris and I had a great dinner in the Placido Domingo room of Café Milano as guests of Kathryn and Wayne Reynolds on the occasional of Derek and Beverly Joubert's visit. They are award-winning film-makers for National Geographic who photograph and film lions, leopards, and cheetahs in the wild. Typical enjoyable Reynolds dinner with many famous guests including: Gen James Jones, Terry McAuliffe, Sam and Jan Donaldson, Tom Daschle, Brendan Sullivan, Fred Hiatt, Tom Friedman, Alexandra Cousteau (Jacques's granddaughter),
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Oct. 13, 2009 - Still extremely intensive media exposure with national media appearances a few times per week and heating up. Had dinner at Zeke Emanuel's home in DC with Chris. Corby Kummer was there as was Rahm Emanuel and his children. Other government people whose names I unfortunately forget.
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2009-10-14 00:00
Anthony S. Fauci
Oct. 14, 2009 - Flew to NYC to give Parker Memorial Lecture to the Dept. of Microbiology and Immunology at Columbia Medical School. Gave the a4B7 lecture that was very well received.
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Oct. 16, 2009 - Went to White House for top secret meeting and counterintelligence briefing by FBI and CIA. Apparently, Russians are monitoring the evolution of our Biodefense campus at Fort Detrick. As usual, a lot of soft stuff. I certainly would expect that they would be doing this since they suspect that we are doing offensive bioterrorism as opposed to defensive biodefense.
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Oct. 18, 2009 - Take off to Paris with Patty Conrad for the 2009 AIDS Vaccine meeting of the IAS and Vaccine Enterprise. Extremely successful meeting in many ways. The RV144 (Thai trial) results were formerly presented coinciding with the online publication of the results in the NEJM. There was significant controversy surrounding the role-out of this vaccine a couple of weeks ago (see above). The complete data showed that the effect was modest, but real. Apart from a few remaining skeptics, the issue now is to learn from this by examining any correlates of immunity. I gave the closing talk on Oct. 22 together with Francois Barre-Sinoussi. My talk was extremely well-received as being visionary. I thoroughly enjoyed preparing and delivering the talk. I discuss the Thai trial, but also the need to pursue low-dose mucosal challenge models in the non-human primate (NHP). Also, I spoke about the importance of studying the early events in HIV infection for insight into the type of immune response that we need to elicit. Also, spoke of the differences in the transmitting versus the chronically replicating virus.
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Oct. 23 - 25, 2009 - Things really heating up with the press jumping all over the USG for "overpromising" the number of doses of vaccine that would be available. In fact, despite my warnings, BAARDA (Robin Robinson - nice guy, but naïve) believed the pharmaceutical companies that they would have 160 million doses by October 15. In fact they had 11 million and instead of ultimately getting 250 million, we are lucky if we get 140 million. Big gap between supply and demand with long lines for vaccine and widespread flu activity in 46 states. Perfect storm. wn (CNN), BBC distribution. Front I have been as much media as in the anthrax days. Just on October 23-25 I was on 11 major networks and cable trying to explain the vaccine supply problem - Today Show, NBC Nightly News, multiple MSNBCs, CNN Situation Room, CNN American Morning, Charlie Rose, NPR, WTOP, Good Morning America, Jim Lehr's The NewsHour, BBC, etc.
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Oct. 25, 2009 - Reception and dinner in Georgetown 1692- 31st Street, N.W., hone of Susan and David Axelrod to view live the "60 Minutes" show about their ordeal with their daughter Lauren's epilepsy that she has had from birth and that now at 28 years old has left her with significant brain damage. They are wonderful people and have started the organization called CURE (Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy) to do research on epilepsy. Typical high-powered DC gathering: Rahm Emanuel, VP Joe Biden and Jill Biden, Gen. James Jones, Mort Kondrake, Al Hunt, Bruce Reed, Linda Douglas (ABC), Bob Bennett, and many, many others.