A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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Mar. 25, 2012 - Went to Baltimore to present John Bartlett with an award from AIDS Action Baltimore. He was delighted at my laudation. It was run by AIDS activist and friend of mine - Lynda Dee.. er
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Mar. 26, 2012 - Gave my Nifty-Fifty Lecture on a "Career in Public Service" TO Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda. It was fun since the students were so engaged with me.
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Mar. 27, 2012 - Went to National Portrait Gallery to have historical filming of my experience with HIV and my career. It is part of the National Portrait Project to film the histories of important Americans who have made major contributions.
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Mar. 28, 2012 - Senate Appropriations Subcommittee Hearing for NIH. Francis Collins, me, Varmus, Griffin, Insel, Hodes. Too bad that these hearing are only a total of 2 hours when we used to have 2 hours for NIAID alone. I got questions on the H5N1 issue.
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2012-03-29 00:00
Anthony S. Fauci
Mar. 29-30, 2012 - Intense meeting for 1 1⁄2 days of the NSABB to re-visit the decision regarding publication of the 2 manuscripts - Fouchier (Science) and Kawaoka (Nature). It was clear that the driving forces to still block full publication were Mike Osterholm and David Relman. Surprisingly, Arturo Casadevall was also adamant. I spent the entire 2 days in the room and gave rationale argument why the manuscripts should be published without my being too aggressive. At the end of the meeting it was voted 18 - 0 to publish the Kawaoka manuscript and 12 - 6 to publish the Fouchier manuscript. Thus, the NSABB reversed themselves. Several factors went into this. First was (although they were reluctant to admit it) was the fact that although the Fouchier manuscript was not clearly written and Ron himself had given the impression that these were really dangerous results, the fact is the NSABB completely misinterpreted the transmission experiments (see above regarding Geneva meeting of Feb. 16-17). They had thought that the animals that had been infected by aerosol had actually died when they did not. They only died when 1 million IDs were inserted directly into the trachea of the ferrets. In addition, some epidemiology data were presented that showed that in the wild in Chickens and even in some infections in people (in Egypt), the virus was assimilating some of the mutations described and engineered by Fouchier and Kawaoka. An interesting note: in typical bullshit fashion that I have seen before, Mike Imperiale and Lynn Enquist (NSABB members told May Patterson that they wanted me to declare right before the 2nd day that since I was a funder of the research that I had a conflict of interest in the discussions even though I had every right to be there since I am an ex officio member of the Board. They actually felt that I might not give grants to people who were funded by NIAID and who voted to not publish the manuscripts........absolutely amazing bullshit! In any event, I merely said at the beginning of the second day that as everyone knows I am the funder of the research, but that I respect greatly the members of the board and their opinions and this was "nothing personal, but strictly business". You could tell that the good people on the Board had no idea why I was saying this, but it apparently satisfied the "cowards" on the Board. If they are not strong enough to stand up for what they feel, they should not be on a USG Advisory Board. It will be interesting to see what the press such as Laurie Garrett who was blogging like crazy regarding how "courageous" the board was in standing up to the self-interest of the influenza research community when, in fact< she had no idea what the data showed - ya uss the NSABB typical Laurie Garrett. Also, I wonder what Phil Boffey is thinking. He was skeptical of me on our phone conversations when I said that he went too far with his alarmist Editorial in the NY Times on "Engineered Doomsday". He sort of rebuked me saying that the NSABB was a Board of "Top Scientists" and how could I be so at odds with them. I could not tell him at the time that they had completely mis-read the manuscript. Interesting and unprecedented situation. Also, on the first day of the meeting (March 29), the USG (mainly NSS) came out with the official DURC Policy that guides how we should approach DURC.
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April 5, 2012 - Appeared on Channel 8 "Capitol Insider" to discuss the NSABB situation.
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April 11, 2012 - Amazing shit. Mike Imperiale (mostly likely him) of the NSABB called a New Editor from Nature (Brendan Maher) and told him that he felt nervous about voting against publication of the manuscripts since he was afraid that I would not fund his grants if he did. I cannot believe the pettiness and cowardice of some people in Science.
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April 12, 2012 - I called Paul Berg is Stanford today to get his perspective since he was so involved in a leadership role in the Asilomar situation in the 1970s. We had a great conversation as we discussed the similarities and differences between then and now. I pointed out and he agreed that there is still today "scientific hubris" on the part of some people. Ron Fouchier showed that early on. Hopefully now he is "cured". However, Paul emphasized (as I feel) that the issue with bioterrorists is really a non-issue. He is concerned about sloppy science and public trust. He said that in the 1970s there was little concern about "germ warfare". I told him that that is the biggest difference from todfay when biodefense and biosecurity is a cottage interested with people (Ingesbly et al) and Agencies (DHS) who think about and work on this full time. In addition, there are the biodefense "Beltway Bandits". This "Biosecurity intimidation" matches the "Scientific Hubris". More amazing shit. Mike Osterholm wrote a letter to Amy Patterson with a cc to the entire NSABB membership excluding the ex officio members saying that he feels that the NSABB meeting was "rigged' by us to come up with the outcome that happened. I truly believe that he is traying to cover his ass that the NSABB completely missed the point of the transmissibility. This is similar to the Nature issue from yesterday. In addition, he disingenuously mentioned to Amy in the e-mail that he does not want this to be a public statement and does not want it to leak even though he copied about 50 people. Give me a break!!!! See letter below. NSABB letter final 41212.pdf April, 13, 2012 - It has leaked 12 hours after it was sent. There is no way that Mike did not know it would leak since he sent it to so many people. It has appeared on the Nature website and in and "Science Insider" article by Jon Cohen. It is clear to me that Mike Osterholm is bipolar. If you look at the letter, it is crazy. He keeps referring to "anonymous" influenza researchers who are not involved in transmissibility research who say that the research should not have been done. In the Science Insider piece, Susan Ehrlich, another NSABB member says that she agrees with Mike. She is a complete goof-ball, having spoken with her at the NSABB meeting. Mike goes on in the letter to say that the NIH did not invite any experts on surveillance or non-transmission influenza experts, even though he requested this. We checked all of the files and he never made any such requests. He asked for a security briefing that said that there was no credible terror threat with H5N1. This is not what he wanted to hear and so he said that the briefing was useless. BTW, it was given by the CIA and the NIA. He also states that according to discussions at the March 29-30 NSABB meeting, Ron Fouchier already has the necessary mutations to create a ferret-transmissible virus that do not require passage. Since Mike absolutely knew that this letter would leak, he has egregiously violated the confidentiality agreement of the NSABB. This together with the paranoid statement of Mike Imperiale that he was uncomfortable because he thought that the NIAID would not fund his grant if he voted to not publish makes me certain that the NSABB as it is presently constituted is fatally flawed. As you can imagine, the press and bloggers are having a field day with this. I am astounded that Helen Branswell (Canadian Press) was more interested in why she was not given the leaked document than she was in the fact that the very leaking of the document reflects the craziness of some people on the NSABB. This whole process has circumvented our plan to coordinate with the Dutch our release of the NSABB recommendations since Mike in effect has made public the "minority vote" before the actual majority vote to publish. Remember, the committee voted 18-0 to publish the Kawaoka manuscript and 12-6 to publish the Fouchier manuscript.
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April 14, 2012 - Went over John and Elaine Gallin's to first have John and I fish in the Potomac and then have dinner. Unfortunately, John backed out of his garage going very fast without looking in his rear view mirror and smashed the rear-end of my car. Damages = >$5000.00. More later.