Diary Prequel Package — page 458

srady appeared ty June 10, 2015 - Long interview with me on XDR TB patient by Denise Grady appeared today in the NY Times. Also, did FOX Channel 25 Local News this AM. Got report from BSC and was told that "Outstanding" was not a sufficient adjective to describe how good my laboratory and my section was. Praised my leadership and it was the first time that every single person in a given laboratory got "outstanding". Called the lab a "National Treasure". June 12, 2015 - Did Bloomberg TV on MERS, which is still going on in South Korea. Now up to 133 cases and 14 deaths. We here at level of HHS are already having the usual conference calls of preparedness regarding development of therapeutics and vaccines. June 15, 2015 - had dinner over my house with Eric Goosby and Chris - the now traditional sausage and rigatoni dinners that I have had with Eric, Harold Varmus, and Gary Nabel over the years. Eric is in town for and IOM workshop. He also is seeking my assistance in obtaining a grant from the DDCF and also NIH now that he is out of government and pursuing global health issues. Of note, he has recently been appointed as the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for TB. Tom Frieden is balking at supporting the proposal for the IOM Study on lessons learned in the Ebola response. I will be supporting the study with NIAID funds. Tom still is not really on the same page with me about what went on during the response. He is still fixating on have the IOM study focus on "alternative clinical trial designs" instead of the RCT. Also, he is still against Cliff trying to extend the RCT to Guinea. Tom feels that the Guineans will react badly to a trial and be paranoid that we are trying to kill them. This conflicts with the fact that the WHO is already doing a ring vaccination (poor design) study in Guinea. Anyway, conversation with Tom are still very cordial and I like him - just disagree with him sometimes. June 16, 2015 - I am in the midst of preparing my talk for the International AIDS Society to take place in Vancouver. As usual I am taking this very seriously and doing multiple drafts. Cliff Lane and I had a teleconference with individuals from Drs. Without Borders (MSF); in particular, we spoke with Sophie Delaunay along with Jennifer Cohen of MSF. The discussion was the interest on the part of MSF to be a major player in the development of a Biobank for specimens in West Africa related to the Ebola outbreak. Cliff and I are somewhat skeptical about this issue since MSF rarely, if ever, gets involved in biomedical research, and when they do, we have had concerns about their capability in this regard. CDC (Tom Frieden) agrees completely with us on this and has skepticism about their involvement. They are a wonderful organization when it comes to taking care of patients; however, we have had some difficult experiences with their inability to really appreciate the importance of the scientific method when doing research.