A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it
answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.
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June 20, 2015 - I viewed the preview of the soon to be shown on HBO documentary on Larry Kramer entitled "Larry Kramer: In Love and Anger". It was played at the Naval Heritage Center on 701 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. The documentary is a moving story of Larry Kramer's complicated life. I was prominently featured in the documentary interacting on multiple occasions with Larry.
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June 22, 2015 - I gave a lecture at Georgetown University O'Neill Institute at the Law School on New Jersey Avenue, NW Summer Program on Infectious Diseases and the Law. Again very well received by the group there. We are in the middle of an extraordinary heat wave now in Washington DC with temperatures reaching 95- 100° with sunny skies during the day and massive thunderstorms at night. ye
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June 23, 2015 - I had a very nice breakfast meeting at the American City Diner with Bill Schultz who is the general counsel for the Department of Health and Human Services. I met with Bill at the suggestion of Pulitzer Prize winning author and close friend of mine Rick Atkinson. Rick was concerned if I got involved with Don Fehr, who offered to be an unofficial agent for me and read over my manuscript as well as tell me how to write a book proposal for an editor, that this informal arrangement could spell out to the a legal issue later. This arrangement might also be something that is frowned upon by the department. And so Rick recommended that I meet with Bill and get his legal advice. My meeting with Bill was terrific. He was extremely encouraging to me about writing my book. He agreed with Rick that I should hold off making even any informal arrangements with anyone and I should just go ahead and continue to write my chapters and when I am ready to leave the government to then put together my proposal and "shop" it around to different publishers and agents. I will take his advice and go that way. This evening I gave a presentation to the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) annual meeting at the Renaissance Hotel Downtown at 999 - 9th Street Northwest. The talk was very similar to what I gave to the HPTN/IMPAACT group.
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June 24, 2015 - I participated with the NIH and CDC team here at NIH in Wilson Hall of Building 1 as well as in Room 151 in the meeting with the Vice Premier of China Jiu Yandong. The meeting was hosted by Sylvia Burwell (Sec., HHS). I presented a talk on the role of NIH in the response to the Ebola Outbreak. I interacted with several of my Chinese colleagues including the Director of the Chinese CDC. An agenda of the meeting is given in the PDF below: draft agenda.pdf June 25 - June 27, 2015 - I travel to Aspen, Colorado to be a participant in the 2015 Aspen Ideas Festival, Spotlight health. It was a most enjoyable experience as I attended several of the panels on areas that were of my own interest and expertise, and even some areas that are not my areas of expertise. With regard to my direct participation, on the morning of Friday, June 26 , I participated in a "Tutorial Session" which was a panel on the topic of "Be Preared: Infectious diseases are here to stay". On the panel with me were Larry Brilliant, Neeraj Mistry, and Storn Kabuluzi of Malawi. The Panel was chaired by Judy Woodruff of The NewsHour (PBS). Judy is an old friend and it was a very lively panel. An added plus for the experience was that I finally got to meet Larry Brilliant who is one of the icons of global health, having participated actively in the eradication of polio from India during his time at WHO. He is the kind of person who I think could be a really good friend. He obviously has an incredible amount of respect for me. The panels that I enjoyed watching were the health and Healthcare session on the morning of June 26, which was a breakfast session right before my session. The speakers with Tom Daschle, Henry Waxman, Bill Frist and the panel was chaired by Steve Clemons, Editor-at-Large for Atlantic magazine. It was a most joyful time for so many of us in Aspen because the very interesting Supreme Court had voted by 6 to 3 to uphold the Affordable Care Act and the tax credit for those who live in states that do not have their own exchanges. In addition, the following day the Supreme Court ruled by 5 to 4 to strike down the prohibition on gay marriage. The Obama administration has had an amazing couple of days. On Friday evening of June 26 it was a wonderful reception at the home of Gail and Al Engelberg who live on a beautiful mansion overlooking the mountains of Aspen and Aspen Valley. The reception was in honor of former secretaries of Health and Human Services. These included David Matthews, Kathleen Sebelius, Donna Shalala, Tommy Thompson. It was great to see Tommy Thompson again as well as all of the others. Of note Donna Shalala wanted to talk to me in her new capacity as the CEO of the Clinton Foundation. Apparently Chelsea Clinton had been approached by people from MSF and WHO to help fund the controversial "ring vaccination" study of the Ebola vaccine that they are conducting in Guinea. As I had mentioned, both Cliff and I feel that this is a flawed study since it has no control group. Donna wanted to know whether the Clinton Foundation should get involved. I recommend strongly to her that they do not support this study and if, in fact, Chelsea Clinton feels that she wants to support it, then it is importantfor the Clinton Foundation to get an outside group to look seriously at the design of the study, which I have a lot of trouble with, as well as to examine the data that is a ready been collected. Donna thanked me for :"Covering my back as you always do". The reception was idyllic in that views were breathtaking, the skies were crystal clear and the weather was warm without any humidity. I met many wonderful people at the reception including a nice conversation with my old friend Ashley Judd, who looked absolutely beautiful. She complimented me on "how great I looked" and on the important work that I have been doing for so long. She was with a little dog and was barefoot. She is an amazing looking woman and a really devoted global health advocate. She was there to talk about her reflections on global health on the following day. One of the people I ran into who was very complimentary was a Zoe Baird, who called me the epitome of the true public servant. She said that I was incomparable in what I have done over so many years for the people of the country in the world. It was a very moving and sincere compliment to me. The following day on Saturday, June 27, I participated in a panel on the "Looming Antibiotic Crisis". On the panel with me was Peggy Hamburg and Ramanan Laximinarayan, who heads the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases. He is a terrific guy with whom I had the opportunity to fly back to Denver with that same morning. All in all it was one of the best trips that I had taken in that the atmosphere was beautiful, the social interactions were in extremely positive, and I got the opportunity to do my thing in front of a lot of important people who have also become over the years good friends.
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2015-06-29 00:00
Anthony S. Fauci
June 29, 2015 - I had two interesting encounters today by telephone with very interesting people on very interesting subjects: 1) Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of Facebook was introduced to me a few weeks ago by e-mail by Susan Desmond Hellman, the current CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Global Foundation. We arranged to have a teleconference between Mark and me today to discuss the issue of Mark wanting to get involved in a -- he signed into lon CNN with philanthropic way with promoting biomedical science. The call lasted one hour from 4 PM to 5 PM on an absolutely brilliantly beautiful day in Washington with clear skies and relatively no humidity(an unusual event in the summer in Washington). Mark was very engaging and we went over the multiple possible ways that he may contribute. He asked probing, highly insightful questions about how we fund biomedical research through grants in the extramural program and by funding the investigators in the intramural program. He was very interested in the concept of funding projects versus funding people. We went over several models of how research is funded. We discussed the issue of creating an institute that is an infrastructure with walls like the Rockefeller University. We also discussed the possibility of an institution that makes grants like the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He asked a lot of questions about the NIH and he wanted to continue the conversation at a later date after he thought a bit about what I had told him. I found him to be a very engaging, highly intelligent young man. 2) Gary Nabel, who is currently at Sanofi in Boston, called me on my cell phone to tell me that he had just been in California and had a conversation with Gov. Jerry Brown. The California State Assembly has put a Bill on the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown that would prohibit exemptions from vaccinations on religious and philosophical grounds. Gov. Brown had spoken to Gary when he was in California today about this since he finds this to be a difficult decision as to whether or not he should sign the bill. Gary spoke to him about me and my knowledge of the subject and Gov. Brown gave Gary his cell phone number to give to me to have me call him. I did so and had about a half an hour conversation with Gov. Brown in which I explained to him the reasons why I feel that he should sign the bill prohibiting religious and philosophical exemptions from vaccinations in the state of California. He asked probing questions. We had a very good conversation and he thanked me heartily for giving him the time. Based on the discussion, I believe that he will sign the bill. We shall see. The TedMed people got back to me and really like my draft. They have made some suggestions that are easy.
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June 30, 2015 - I must have been convincing to Gov. Brown yesterday - he signed into law the California vaccine legislation (see above).
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July 1, 2015 - The California law has attracted some attention. I appeared on CNN with Jake Tapper to discuss it.
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July 2, 2015 - Today I appeared on the Diane Rehm Show where I did somewhat of a debate with Dr. Robert Sears, a pediatrician from California who was concerned about the law recently signed by Gov. Brown in California. On the show with me was Liz Szabo from the newspaper USA Today. In addition, there was a pediatrician who is an expert in parental response to vaccines for their children. Her name is Dr. Allison Kemp. The show went very well and it was clear that Dr. Sears misrepresented certain facts and cherry-picked information for his own advantage. Following the interview, when I got back to my office, I received several e-mails telling me that I did a very nice job in being balanced in my approach. There has been an additional case of Ebola in Liberia. A 17-year-old boy was found dead and was shown by PCR to have had Ebola. Since then, there has been an additional case or two. Therefore, we are concerned that this may be the beginning of another outbreak in Liberia and perhaps in other West African countries. Drew Faust, President of Harvard had e-mailed me a couple of days ago to ask me for suggestions for Dean of Harvard School of Public Health to replace Julio Frenk who had left to become President of University of Miami. I gave her several names and then she responded this AM thanking me and telling me that she had just watched "Larry Kramer: In Love and Anger " (HB0) and this was her comment to me: I spent the evening tonight watching the Larry Kramer HBO documentary in which you figure so prominently--and impressively. The footage throughout is amazing, (I kept thinking what it would be like to have such a record of the Civil War...), and the story both tragic and triumphant. I was powerfully struck by your comment towards the end about how Act Up permanently changed everything in how officials, the state and organized medicine deal with patient communities. The film will remain in my mind for a long time... Very best, Drew
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July 7, 2015 - Met with team from Gilead Sciences who presented data on their new compound GS 5734 that has impressive preclinicakl activity against Ebola. They want our help in testing it in West Africa. It is an RNA Polymerase with activity against MERS, and likely RSV, Chik, and others. We will help them and do a trial in West Africa after we finish the ZMapp trial that is moving along well (47 subjects thus far) in Sierra Leone and soon in Guinea. Infections persist in both countries. Also, last week there was an infection in Liberia with 2 secondary cases. The Gilead people were: Andrew Chang (Head of HIV Therapeutics & Development Operations; William Lee (Head of research); Howard Jaffe (Senior Advisor); and Tomas Cihlar (Head of Discovery Virology). Also, Cliff is back from Guinea and it looks like (despite the continued objections of tom Frieden), we will expand the RCT Vaccine trial into Guinea where there are persistent cases. Had diner tonight at Grapeseed restaurant in Bethesda with the BMGF people who are in town for our yearly joint gates/NIH meeting. Francis Collins and I and Doug owy were the senior NIH people there and Trevor Mundel, Emilio Emini, Chris Carp, Chris Wilson were senior Gates people among others.