Diary Prequel Package — page 176

May 2 - Went to Sommerville, NJ to a Merck retreat to help them decide what they are going to do with their HIV vaccine program following the disappointing results of the STEP study. Many players in the field were there: David Baltimore, Dennis Burton, David Ho, Ron Desrosiers, Jerry Sadoff, a bunch of Merck people. Decision is that although they want to stay intellectually involved and make reagents available to others, they are really going to suspend further studies. May 13 -- Very sad day! May 19 -- Went to Paris to the Institut Pasteur to give a lecture at the Symposium commemorating "25 Years of HIV", i.e. the discovery by Montagnier. Gave initial lecture on our recent paper in Nature Immunology on the new receptor for HIV -- a4B7. Had good time in Paris seeing old friends. Had dinner in the Eiffel Tower with the whole group -- sat next to Alice Daubry -- Director of the Institut Pasteur. May 30 -- AIDS Vaccine Research Subcommittee (AVRS) meeting in Bethesda to discuss decision of whether to proceed with the PAVE 100 study of the VRC. The AVRS voted 23 to 3 to go ahead. Decision will come soon. June 1 -- Gave Commencement Address at UMASS and also saw Jenny in Boston with her friend Endria Dickinson. Had good time. June 4, 2008 -- Jenny's graduation from Harvard. J.K. Rowlings gave a great commencement address. Wonderful time despite very cold (for June -- 52 degrees) and raining for 2 days. Jenny graduated magna cum laude. Had nice dinner at Artu in the North End. June 10 -- Big honor. Was invited by President of the U.N. General Assembly Dr. Srgjan Kerim to deliver a Keynote Address at the 2008 U.N. General Assembly High-Level Meeting on HIV AIDS. Addresses were by Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, Pres. Kerim, Peter Piot, PWA Ms. Ratri Suksma from Malaysia. This was followed by several Heads of State (El Salvador, Togo, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, and Central African Republic). Jenny was in NYC interviewing for jobs and she was there for the presentations. She was excited by it. Have a great photo of me at the podium of the UN General Assembly giving my speech. June 11, 2008 -- It was publicly announced by the White House today that I will receive from the POTUS at the WH the Presidential Medal of Freedom on June 19. Other honorees will include: Dr. Benjamin Carson, Congressman Tom Lantos (posthumously and accepted by his widow), Gen. Peter Pace, Donna Shalala, and Laurence Silberman.