Diary Prequel Package — page 219

that this must mean that I came when I was 11 years old. I had the opportunity of walking him back to his limo to drive around the corner to the entrance to Masur Auditorium. We had a very nice conversation. He knew that I was from NYC. I told him that my father went to Columbia and Megan is a 2TM4 year student at Columbia. He said "Ah, I knew there was something that I really liked about you". I told him about Jenny teaching in Crown Heights and he said that this was terrific. All around, he is an extraordinarily engaging person. I rode in the motorcade to Masur Auditorium with Sec. Sebelius. Obama gave a great speech in the Masur Auditorium. He explicitly mentioned me in his speech referring to what I had told him regarding progress in HIV/AIDS. The audience went wild over him. After he left, to return to the White House, I brought Sec. Sebelius to a patient ward 5SE and had a patient presented to her by Joe Kovacs. It was good to give her a chance to see a hospital ward and a patient. After this we took Sebelius to the Medical Board Room and various IC Directors made short presentations to Sebelius: Richard Hodes and Betsy Nabel on comparative effectiveness research (CER); me on HIV/AIDS; Tom Insel on Autism; Griff Rodgers and Betsy Nabel on obesity. All in all it was a great day for NIH. Obama is an extremely engaging person. Oct. 7, 2009 -- Went to White House to see Francis Collins receive National Medal of Science. When Obama came into the room, I was in the last row (first one he passed), he came over to me and shook my hand. Clearly he now recognizes me as ASF at NIH. Still major press exposure re: HIN1. I am daily on TV, NPR, print papers. The "ban" on me is clearly lifted as Jenny et al are now very comfortable with my talking about anything. Oct. 7 -- 10, 2009 -- Not unexpectedly, the people who are against the Thai trial are making a big stink (anonymously, of course) by leaking to the press that the original announcement on Sept. 24 of the 31% VE with a p value of 0.039 using a mITT analysis was not the correct analysis since the per protocol analysis is a 26% VE with a nonsignificant p value. Everyone knows that the ITT analysis is the gold standard. Nonetheless, these assholes are trying to invalidate the study by rumor milling the press. They got their information by unethically violating an embargo agreement that they had signed when the DoD (out of courtesy) briefed them on all of the data at the time of the Sept, 24 announcement. Clearly, the people involved are Doug Richman, Dennis Burton, Ron desrosiers, John Moore. I finally spoke to the press and had an article in the Sunday (Oct. 11) NY Times with ny picture explaining why it is much to do about nothing.