Diary Prequel Package — page 276

almost comically stated. "You know, I knew there was something funny here when I read the paper and found that after aerosol transmission, blood samples were taken from the ferrets for 12 days. If the ferrets all died in 3 days, did they take samples from dead animals?" Clearly his own editorial staff did not pick it up. There is plenty of blame to go around. Clearly Ron did not say in the manuscript that the aerosol-transmitted animals died, but he never said in the manuscript that they did not die. Clearly he was doing what many scientists do, i.e. play up their own data to make it seem exciting. Yet, he knew that the media were clearly getting it wrong. He will say that he was never given the chance to explain this to the NSABB and his only comments to the press that they clearly misunderstood were before the NSABB and he did not realize that they misunderstood. However, after the decision of the NSABB, he still spoke to the press, yet never made it explicit what really happened. He could claim that at that point he could not discuss the data since it was confidential and the press could not ask the specific question sine they did not see the data. It is clear to me that a lot of people are embarrassed for not asking the Fauci question and as human nature goes, people are running for cover and/or looking to blame someone. Ron is in danger of getting thrown under the bus when the press finds out that he never clarified things. As an example, ABS World News on Saturday PM, Feb 18 had a piece showing all aerosol-infected animals dying schematically on the screen with the ever-present Laurie Garret commenting that "This virus just should not be allowed to exist". See Important e-mails below: Thursday, Feb. 24, 2012 11:26 AM Ron: In follow-up of our previous conversations, it is important for you to revise and expand your manuscript to include the important new data that were presented in Geneva. In addition (and this is critical), you need to make exceptionally clear the differences between the transmission studies and the pathogenicity studies, i.e. the response that you gave to me when I asked that direct question in Geneva whether there was any illness or death in the animals that had been infected by aerosol with the engineered highly pathogenic H5N1. You responded that some of these animals developed flu-like symptoms, all recovered, none got seriously ill and none died. This seems to be the key point about which many people were and are confused. It would be very important to make this exceptionally clear in the manuscript. There are also other important data that we discussed that would be important to include in a revised manuscript. I believe that the best course of action would be to resubmit this revised manuscript to the NSABB so that they have the opportunity to have all of the data that we discussed in Geneva in front of them as well as to directly question you in person in order to clarify any important points. Amy Patterson will request that the NSABB meet and review this manuscript. As I had mentioned to you, Francis Collins and I have spoken to Bruce Alberts about the importance of your having enough journal space to add the new data and a broader discussion of the issues. In our initial conversations with him, he seemed amenable to this approach. Obviously, we cannot know for sure what the journal decision will be. Francis and I will be speaking to Bruce again today (I hope)