A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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April 19, 2010 - Went to the Lasker Board of Directors dinner at the Citronelle Restaurant in Georgetown at the invitation of Maria Freire. Sat next to Al Somer. Good evening, but ridiculous situation where the government people (me, Peggy Hamburg, John Gallin, Harvey Alter actually had to pay for our own meal due to misguided conflict of interest rules.
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April 21, 2010 - Continue to have weekly meetings in the Situation Room of WH led by Heidi Avery. Continued frustration on Heidi's part about the lack of cooperation on part of Nicki Lurie and HHS. Heidi wants transformation and HHS is conservative, only concerned about the Secretary, and "stuck in the mud". What a sorry crew. These meeting are started to take a toll on my schedule with having to take the METRO down and back and the Red Line being barely functional with amazing slowness and frequent mishaps.
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April 27, 2010 - Another Sit Room WH meeting to discuss budget and implementation of MCM initiative. Continued tension. I am with Heidi.
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April 28, 2010 - Busy day. Two Congressional (House) Hearing in the Rayburn Building: 1) Appropriation Subcommittee chaired by David Obey. I accompanied Francis Collins along with Tom Insel (NIMH) and Griff Rogers (NIDDK) to testify. Friendly Hearing but budget is depressing - flat. 2) in the late afternoon - House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee Hearing on Antibiotic Resistance chaired by Frank Pallone (D-NJ). Testified with Tom Frieden. Typical posturing back and forth between Dems and GOPs about Health Care Reform (nothing to do with the subject of the Hearing). We did well.
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2010-04-29 00:00
Anthony S. Fauci
April 29, 2010 - ICD retreat - at the Cloisters. I spoke on the MCM initiative of the WH and the NIAID role in this. Others spoke on translational research. Much of meeting was on translational research. Clearly the NIH (under Francis) is heading in that direction.
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April 30, 2010 - Did Congressional Briefing on AIDS research sponsored by AMFAR at the Rayburn Building. Susan Blumenthal chaired it. Also there was Wafaa El-Sadr.
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May 1, 2010 -Went to Saturday Brunch gala at The Haddad/Greenberg residence at 4852 Hutchins Place, N.W. as a pre- WH Correspondence Ball function. Featured Susan Axelrod of CURES (for epilepsy). Many of the usual DC glitterati, media and Hollywood Stars there. Saw my old friend Dana Delaney and practically every media person I know - David Gregory, Wolf Blitzer, Chris and Kathleen Matthews, etc.
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May 2, 2010 - Annual McLaughlin (now together with Reuters) Sunday Brunch after the WH Correspondents' ball. Hel at the usual Rooftop of the Hay-Adams Hotel. Met with and spoke with Dennis Quaid who is an advocate of eliminating "Hospital errors". His child was the victim of a medication error involving a heparin line through which the infant was given 10,000 times the dose of heparin.
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May 5, 2010 - At his request, had meeting in my office with J. Craig Venter. He wanted to brief me and get my advice on how to handle the rollout of his upcoming Science paper on Synthetic Biology. He has made a major advance in synthesizing from the sequence in a computer the 1.1 million base pairs of Mycoplasma mycoides and inserted it into a Mycoplasma capricolum bacteria. The synthetic mycoides then began to code for the proteins of the bacterial cell wall so that after several replications there was a bacteria with a synthetic genome and all of the protein coded for by the synthetic genome, thus a synthetic cell. I advised him to be very transparent at this and present it to the NAS, the OSTP, among others. He has lined up some embargoed press in anticipation of the release next week of the paper on May 13. He very much wanted me to do heavy press with him likely to add a greater degree of credibility to it as well as because I explain science so well. From today until the House Hearing on May 27, HHS and the White House completely muzzled me for ridiculous reasons. Despite the fact that John Holdren submitted my name to the WH as the best person to do TV, radio and print, the WH muzzled all government comment on this. They were "afraid to elevate it publicly by having well-known government figures speak about it since they did not want flack from the "right" that the government was involved in "creating" life. Unbelievable!! Rick Weiss who is communications director for OSTP is extremely distraught about the muzzling. Of note, this has happened to me throughout the H1N1 flu pandemic. Apparently, besides Jenny Backus, more importantly, David Pfeiffer at the White House is now behind the muzzling.