Diary Prequel Package — page 348

investigators throughout the country who are working with select agents. The rationale for this is the fact that if the CDC could make mistakes like this, then virtually anyone can. This is aligning with the issue of many people wanting to put a clamp on gain of function research, particularly with influenza. More to come. July 14, 2014 - More press on Mississippi Baby (Al Jazeera TV) as well as fluff over the WHO coming out with recommendation that MSM who practice unsafe sex should take PrPE (Truvada). Press misinterpreted this (partly fault of WHO) to mean that all gay men should be on Truvada as PrEP. I had to clarify this on Al Jazeera and in the NY Times (article soon to appear). Preparing to go to Melbourne for the IAS International AIDS meeting. July 16, 2014 - The situation is heating up considerably with regard to the three infractions that have occurred in HHS concerning potentially lethal microbes. The first was the finding of the smallpox vials in the FDA building (29A) on the NIH campus. The next was the egregious dysfunction of the teams involved in dealing with selective select agent research down at the CDC and third was the contamination at the CDC of a highly pathogenic influenza virus (H5N1) with a nonpathogenic influence virus (H7N9). This has been all over the media in a very intense way. The White House as well as the Department of Health and Human Services is involved. Francis Collins and I received a letter from Nobel laureates Paul Berg and Richard Roberts to discuss how we might address this escalating issue. They have been consistently against gain-of-function research, especially on influenza. In addition Francis and I together with Peggy Hamburg and Tom Frieden were called to a meeting this evening at HHS with Secretary Sylvia Burwell to discuss the HHS plan as well as the fact that Sylvia will be meeting with the POTUS on Friday, July 18 to discuss the matter and she needed to be briefed by us. I have suggested to Francis and he agrees that we call a temporary moratorium on all gain of function research on influenza and the MERS virus involving increasing pathogenesis and increasing transmissibility by the respiratory route. Also, Francis and I brought up (clearly my idea for some time now) to re-invigorate the NSABB and get them much more in the mix of recommendations and involvement. We had a good meeting with Sylvia Burwell in her office tonight that lasted from 7 PM to 9 PM. Francis and I will be talking over the phone tomorrow with Richard Roberts and Paul Berg about a plan for the future. Also, today Barry Bloom called me from the Harvard School of Public Health to ask whether or not he could help us in addressing this new and emerging political problem. In addition, I received a call from Michael Osterholm to warn me, as he is often doing, that there will be problems "for me" that he wants to help. I get concerned when Michael wants to "help" me. He generally gets hysterical about microbial threats and loves to be in the press. July 17, 2014 - Francis Collins and I had conference call with Richard Roberts and Marc Lipsitch regarding the above issues. Great conversation. We told them that changes were going to occur and that we cannot give details, but we are going to look carefully at all the issues. In particular, I told them that we were going to re-examine the risk/benefit ratio of doing gain-of-function research in influenza, in particular. They were pleased.