A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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Sept. 15, 2012 - Exceptionally pleasant and enjoyable evening. Bob and Deborah Seder invited Chris and me to join them for the Bruce Springsteen concert at Nationals Stadium. He arranged an amazing group of 10 people for the event. It included Bob Woodward and his wife Elsa Walsh, a couple Christen (executive director of the Four Seasons Hotel in DC) and his wife Meg (? last name), Bob (very wealthy entrepreneur) and wife Alison (? Last name) Bob and Deborah, Chris and me. We met at Café Milano and had a great meal; a van took us to Nat's Stadium and back. The concert was truly amazing. Springsteen and his E Street band gave the best musical performance that I have ever experienced. We had seats on the infield right in front of the stage that was set up on where the outfield is for baseball games. However, we did not sit since everyone was standing. Springsteen played for 3 hours and 45 minutes without stopping for a minute. He went from one song to another. The crowd absolutely loved it. It was a beautiful "Indian Summer" evening at around 70 degrees. Got to know Bob Woodward with prolonged conversations about what I do and what he does. He feels passionate about what he wrote in his latest book (came out this week) entitled "The Price of Politics". He is a good guy and it was fun getting to know him.
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Sept. 18, 2012 - Pleasant surprise. Received an inscribed copy of Bob Woodward's new book "The Price of Politics" with a note written in the first page - "To Tony Fauci and Christine Grady - What a great night it was! - With greatest regards, Bob Woodward".
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Sept. 19, 2012 - Received "The Starlight Award" together with Roy Vagelos from the Children's Inn at NIH. I received it for the "Science" and Roy for his extraordinary influence on building of the Inn in 1990 with Merck money when he was at the time the CEO of Merck. Ceremony held at the Liaison Hotel at 415 New Jersey Avenue, N.W. Many notables from Congress and entertainment at the event. To name a few: Congressmen Chris van Hollen, John Dingle, Barney Frank, Doris Matsui; Sens. Frank Lautenberg, Roy Blunt; TV Anchor Gordon Peterson. MC was Cokie Roberts. Twentyeight year old former AIDS patient Hydeia Broadbent gave speech and I was praised for helping to develop the drugs that saved her life when she came to the Inn and NIH at age 6 years old with advanced AIDS and now she is healthy and happy - many tears in the audience.
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Sept. 25, 2012 - Meeting in the Situation Room of the White House (1:30 to 3:00 PM) called by Heidi Avery. Discussed the issues around DURC and how we are going to address the voluntary (on the part of the scientists) moratorium on gain-of-function for transmissibility in mammals research on highly pathogenic avian H5N1 influenza. We (ASF, May Patterson, Francis Collins, Larry Tabak and the HHS crew led by Sally Howard, Chief-of-Staff to Sebelius and Bill Corr, Deputy Secretary, HHS) have been working for several weeks on a meeting-working group-consultation (to take place hopefully in December, 2012) to develop principles for making decisions regarding funding (mostly by HHS) for these types of H5N1 experiments. These principles could then serve as the basis for guidelines for DURC that go well beyond H5N1. The Europeans (mostly the Dutch with Ron Fouchier) want to end the moratorium now. I have written a commentary to appear soon in mBio (online Journal of the ASM) that asks for keeping the moratorium on H5N1 gain-of-function until the abovementioned December meeting. The NSABB people, particularly Mike Osterholm, Mike Imperiale, and David Relman are continuing their somewhat hysterical comments in and out of the press about how dangerous these experiments are and how they should never be performed. Heidi is adamant that they could be very important to do these experiments for the national security and she does not tolerate any "advisory group" such as NSABB dictating to the USG what it can or cannot do in the line of National Security. I love Heidi; she is a tough CIA operative and unfortunately for us will return to the CIA soon. She confided this to me a week or so ago. Apparently, Leon Panetta has some important, secret assignment for her. As always, she e-mails me or calls me after an important White House meeting to get my take on it. I am inserting below an e-mail she sent me (10:15 PM - Sept. 25, 2012) the evening after the White House meeting: Tony, Just to say thank you for your time today, along with your NIH colleagues. I am very sorry for how tedious parts of the discussion became. We were not all on the same page before the meeting. Hopefully you agree we identified a path forward. I will not be around to see this through, but very much hope success is achieved in terms of HHS guidelines enabling researchers to be comfortable moving forward with this important work. Really is a national security imperative. Best regards, Heidi
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2012-09-27 00:00
Anthony S. Fauci
Sept. 27, 2012 - Attended World Leaders Forum at the Low Library at Columbia University. On a panel with Wafaa El-Sadr, Eric Goosby and Michel Sidibe (Director, UNAIDS). Very enjoyable. Jenny attended. Discussed the potential end of AIDS.
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Oct. 6 - 10, 2012 - trip to South Africa mainly to participate in the opening of the Kwazulu-Natal Research Institute for TB and HIV (K-RITH) in Durban. Flew to Johannesburg and gave special lecture on Ending the AIDS Pandemic to the University of Witwatersrand. Then drove to Pretoria to participate in the 10th Anniversary of the PHIDISA project with the South Africa National Defense Force (SANDF). This program largely championed by Cliff Lane. Then flew to Durban to Open the K-RITH. Amazing architecture of the new building. Many luminaries present at the opening - Ron Daniels (Pres. of JHU), Pres. Of Mass. General, Rob Tjian - President of HHMI who funded the project. NIAID funds Bill Safai (PI of KRITH). Great dinner at the Oyster Box Hotel. I gave some after dinner remarks.
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Oct. 12, 2012 - Lunch at the Italian Ambassador's (Amb. Bisogniero) home (Villa Firenze) on Albermarle Street, N.W. Lunch in honor of former Italian Ambassador, now Foreign Minister of Italy Giulio Terzi di Sant'Agata.
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Oct. 15, 2012 - Attended the Elton John AIDS Foundation Benefit Gala at Cipriani's Restaurant on Wall Street by special invitation of Sir Elton John whom I had met at the IAS meeting in DC in July, 2012. The entertainment by Stevie Nicks was amazing. Many people came up to me thanking me for my work. Most of these I had never met before. Heavy representation of donors and business luminaries.
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Oct. 16, 2012 - Spoke at the Annual Meeting of the Institute of Human Virology (Bob Gallo's Institute) held at the Marriott Waterfront Hotel in Baltimore. Took train from NYC (Elton John Gala) directly to Baltimore.