Diary Prequel Package — page 107

Oct. 4, 2004 - Meeting in the Situation Room of the White House to brief Ken Rapuano (Deputy to Fran Townsend) on the IL-4 - monkeypox experiment that is being proposed as a classified experiment to be performed by DHS. I presented the rationale behind the experiment. Also present were Carol Kuntz, Ken Bernard, Stewart Simonson, Maureen McCarthy, Gerry Parker, et al. Although NIAID will not perform these experiments, Fran Townsend wanted to make sure that I did the briefing since she trusts me. The plan is for me to make the same presentation to Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld soon after the election. Oct. 5, 2004 - Historic day today with the UK regulatory agency suspending the license of Chiron to ship out their influenza vaccine to the USA because of issues related to the inspection of the plant in Liverpool. This is a huge issue for the USA since Chiron was scheduled to supply about 46-48 million doses or about 50% of our yearly requirement of 100 million doses. Only Aventis Pasteur (50 millioin doses) and Medimmune (2 million doses of Flumist) are available. We heard about this abruptly this AM as we (Julie gerberding and I) were getting ready to testify at House Hearing on Thimerasol in Influenza vaccines. Oct. 6, 2004 - Trip to Duke to honor retirment of Ralph Snyderman as Chancellor. White House conference call at the airport in Raleigh-Durham on way back regarding the influenza vaccine issue. Oct. 7, 2004 - Trip to Duke to honor the retirement of Ralph Snyderman. Gave talk on Emerging Infectious Diseases. White House conference call on Influenza issue (see above). Incredible amount of media appearances: radio, TV, print. As much as I have ever done. Oct. 8, 2004 - Big time Congressional Hearing on influenza vaccine problem before the House Government Reform Committee. I testified with Julie Gerberding and Lester Crawford of FDA. More media, White House Conference calls, and Jim Lehr NewsHour to finish the day. Oct. 9, 2004 - Front page story in the Washington Post saying that the UK regulatory authorities told our FDA about the problem at the end of August with the implication that the FDA failed to act in preparing for the shortage. Acting FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford explained on our regularly scheduled White House Conference Call that this is misinformation. As we (me, Julie and Les) have stated all along, Chiron kept reassuring us that there was a problem with about 4 million does due to contamination with Serratia marcescens. Never did anyone say to FDA or CDC (nor did Rino Rapualli say to me) that there was a serious enough problem to suspend licensure. John Kerry came out with ugly statement saying that the Administration is covering up. Oct. 10, 2004 - Things still hot and heavy with the Chiron/influenza situation. Had another White House conference call with Margaret Spellings, Alan Gilbert, Phil Hall, Harriet Miers (Deputy Chief-of-Staff), Jon Burks, Ken Bernard, Trent Duffy, Scott