Diary Prequel Package — page 461
of 465 pages
← p.460 p.462 → · this page in the original PDF · package
very interesting
Supreme Court had voted by 6 to 3 to uphold the Affordable Care Act and the tax credit
for those who live in states that do not have their own exchanges. In addition, the
following day the Supreme Court ruled by 5 to 4 to strike down the prohibition on gay
marriage. The Obama administration has had an amazing couple of days.
On Friday evening of June 26 it was a wonderful reception at the home of Gail and Al
Engelberg who live on a beautiful mansion overlooking the mountains of Aspen and
Aspen Valley. The reception was in honor of former secretaries of Health and Human
Services. These included David Matthews, Kathleen Sebelius, Donna Shalala, Tommy
Thompson. It was great to see Tommy Thompson again as well as all of the others. Of
note Donna Shalala wanted to talk to me in her new capacity as the CEO of the Clinton
Foundation. Apparently Chelsea Clinton had been approached by people from MSF and
WHO to help fund the controversial "ring vaccination" study of the Ebola vaccine that
they are conducting in Guinea. As I had mentioned, both Cliff and I feel that this is a
flawed study since it has no control group. Donna wanted to know whether the Clinton
Foundation should get involved. I recommend strongly to her that they do not support
this study and if, in fact, Chelsea Clinton feels that she wants to support it, then it is
importantfor the Clinton Foundation to get an outside group to look seriously at the
design of the study, which I have a lot of trouble with, as well as to examine the data that
is a ready been collected. Donna thanked me for :"Covering my back as you always do".
The reception was idyllic in that views were breathtaking, the skies were crystal clear and
the weather was warm without any humidity. I met many wonderful people at the
reception including a nice conversation with my old friend Ashley Judd, who looked
absolutely beautiful. She complimented me on "how great I looked" and on the
important work that I have been doing for so long. She was with a little dog and was
barefoot. She is an amazing looking woman and a really devoted global health advocate.
She was there to talk about her reflections on global health on the following day. One of
the people I ran into who was very complimentary was a Zoe Baird, who called me the
epitome of the true public servant. She said that I was incomparable in what I have done
over so many years for the people of the country in the world. It was a very moving and
sincere compliment to me. The following day on Saturday, June 27, I participated in a
panel on the "Looming Antibiotic Crisis". On the panel with me was Peggy Hamburg
and Ramanan Laximinarayan, who heads the Global Network for Neglected Tropical
Diseases. He is a terrific guy with whom I had the opportunity to fly back to Denver
with that same morning. All in all it was one of the best trips that I had taken in that the
atmosphere was beautiful, the social interactions were in extremely positive, and I got the
opportunity to do my thing in front of a lot of important people who have also become
over the years good friends.
June 29, 2015 - I had two interesting encounters today by telephone with very interesting
people on very interesting subjects:
1) Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of Facebook was introduced to me a few
weeks ago by e-mail by Susan Desmond Hellman, the current CEO of the Bill and
Melinda Gates Global Foundation. We arranged to have a teleconference between
Mark and me today to discuss the issue of Mark wanting to get involved in a
This is our OCR of the page, with running headers and footers removed. The
Committee's PDF
is authoritative; quote from it. Machine-readable, including the uncleaned
text: /api/page/diary_prequel/461
Records on this page
| Record | Date | Type | Pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| June 24, 2015 - I participated with the NIH and CDC team here at NIH in Wilson Hall | 2015-06-24 | diary entry | 460–461 |
| June 29, 2015 - I had two interesting encounters today by telephone with very interesting | 2015-06-29 | diary entry | 461–462 |