Diary Prequel Package — page 296

Howard, Chief-of-Staff to Sebelius and Bill Corr, Deputy Secretary, HHS) have been working for several weeks on a meeting-working group-consultation (to take place hopefully in December, 2012) to develop principles for making decisions regarding funding (mostly by HHS) for these types of H5N1 experiments. These principles could then serve as the basis for guidelines for DURC that go well beyond H5N1. The Europeans (mostly the Dutch with Ron Fouchier) want to end the moratorium now. I have written a commentary to appear soon in mBio (online Journal of the ASM) that asks for keeping the moratorium on H5N1 gain-of-function until the abovementioned December meeting. The NSABB people, particularly Mike Osterholm, Mike Imperiale, and David Relman are continuing their somewhat hysterical comments in and out of the press about how dangerous these experiments are and how they should never be performed. Heidi is adamant that they could be very important to do these experiments for the national security and she does not tolerate any "advisory group" such as NSABB dictating to the USG what it can or cannot do in the line of National Security. I love Heidi; she is a tough CIA operative and unfortunately for us will return to the CIA soon. She confided this to me a week or so ago. Apparently, Leon Panetta has some important, secret assignment for her. As always, she e-mails me or calls me after an important White House meeting to get my take on it. I am inserting below an e-mail she sent me (10:15 PM - Sept. 25, 2012) the evening after the White House meeting: Tony, Just to say thank you for your time today, along with your NIH colleagues. I am very sorry for how tedious parts of the discussion became. We were not all on the same page before the meeting. Hopefully you agree we identified a path forward. I will not be around to see this through, but very much hope success is achieved in terms of HHS guidelines enabling researchers to be comfortable moving forward with this important work. Really is a national security imperative. Best regards, Heidi Sept. 27, 2012 - Attended World Leaders Forum at the Low Library at Columbia University. On a panel with Wafaa El-Sadr, Eric Goosby and Michel Sidibe (Director, UNAIDS). Very enjoyable. Jenny attended. Discussed the potential end of AIDS. Oct. 6 - 10, 2012 - trip to South Africa mainly to participate in the opening of the Kwazulu-Natal Research Institute for TB and HIV (K-RITH) in Durban. Flew to Johannesburg and gave special lecture on Ending the AIDS Pandemic to the University of Witwatersrand. Then drove to Pretoria to participate in the 10th Anniversary of the PHIDISA project with the South Africa National Defense Force (SANDF). This program largely championed by Cliff Lane. Then flew to Durban to Open the K-RITH. Amazing architecture of the new building. Many luminaries present at the opening - Ron Daniels (Pres. of JHU), Pres. Of Mass. General, Rob Tjian - President of HHMI