Diary Prequel Package — page 264

Bono's organizations. Sanjay Gupta was the MC. We had Presidents Bush and Clinton by live video conference and President Obama delivered the speech that Eric Goosby, Tom Frieden and I and others wrote for him. As expected, he went with Option #2 (see above - Nov. 8, 2011). In addition, he included an additional $15 million (for Clinics) + $35 million (for States) = $50 million for ADAP total. Again, Tom Frieden and HHS people (see above) have been working on the "domestic option" for the past couple of weeks to offset criticism that we were paying attention to global, but not domestic AIDS. Following the POTUS speech, there was a panel moderated by Sanjay consisting of Bono, Alecia Keys, Kay Warren, Rep. Barbara Lee, Sen. Marco Rubio and a few others. I was told a few days prior that Sanjay would turn to me with a question sometime during the program. Right after Pres. Clinton's live video speech, Sanjay said that you cannot have a discussion about HIV/AIDS without including Tony Fauci (who is in the audience) and his perspective on the science and he turned to me to speak. I spoke for a few minutes about the fact that the scientific data were overwhelming (circumcision; treatment as prevention, etc.) and the task now was to implement the science. The statement was similar to what I had said at the IAS meeting in Rome in July. Right after my comment, Bono said that he must tell a funny story and he proceeded to describe the night when he came to my house for dinner to discuss what we could do to push the global AIDS agenda. He was cute. He said that his friend Bobby Schriver told him that the only person that could break the logjam on Global AIDS programs was Tony Fauci. He finished by calling me a "proper hero". A YouTube record of this statement by Bono is available for Dec. 1. Also, I had a chance to say a few words to Pres. Obama as he was "working the line" following his speech. He congratulated me for the great work that we were doing and that he has been hearing about. All in all, a really good day!! Of note, Gregg Gonsalves wrote a scathing letter to Raj Shah (that went viral on the internet) scolding him for obstructing the treatment as prevention initiative (see above discussions re: Raj). Unclear to me how Gregg found out about all of this. Dec. 2,, 2011 - Finishing off WAD activities, went to Harvard on a beautiful crisp clear December day and participated in the AIDS@30 International Symposium. I gave the keynote "Perspective" on vaccines and participated in a panel Chaired by Bruce Walker and consisting of Bob Gallo, Nelson Michael, Jerry Sadoff, and Julie McElrath. Flew up to Boston with Eric Goosby and flew back to DC with Nelson Michael. All good. Dec. 2 thru 21, 2011 - Significant issues regarding dual use research. Check press from Dec. 20-21, 2011. Briefly, NIAID funded 2 studies - subcontract via CEIRS (Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance) to Erasmus University in Netherlands (Ron Fouchier) and grant to Yoshi Kawaoka at Wisconsin to study feasibility and mechanism of getting the highly lethal (60%), but poorly transmissible H5N1 (bird flu) that has been smothering in SE Asia since 1997 to become transmissible and maintain lethality in a mammal model (ferret). Rationale for the study was to determine - Can it happen (in mammals) since many people reasonably assume that it cannot since it has not done this in nature despite being around in chickens and rarely in humans since 1994? Also, if it does become transmissible by point