Wednesday, April 14, 2004

White House meeting (EEOB 476) with Gary Edson, Rick Klausner, Rachel Ingram (Gates) and David Lane (Gates), Martina Strong, Carol Thompson to discuss the role of the Gates Foundation in the HIV Vaccine Enterprise. Rick presented the same case as I did and said that Gates would be willing to invest $100 million this year and that the whole project would probably need $400 million per year for 10 years. He wanted the USG to try to put in more money. Gary was concerned about the fact that we have no new money, although he really likes the Enterprise concept. After Rick left, Gary and I discussed how much if any money would be feasible to invest as new money. As opposed to just challenging the G-8 to join and endorse the process. He wanted to think about it more. One of the issues that he brought up even when Rick was there was the problem of doing something and then getting criticized the way that we have been criticized about PEPFAR. April 15-16, 2004 – Series of phone calls and e-mails involving Gary, Kristen and me. Apparently, Kristen really likes the idea about putting some substance (new resources) into the POTUS proposal to the G-8 and Garry asked me to cost out a real center a virtual center and also a vaccine production plant. He sent it to Kristen who asked me for some clarifications and now will run it up to Josh Bolten. This may be a go if we can convince Josh to get some new money. I coasted a real center (with walls) at $55 million for construction and start-up and $47 million for annual operations. I costed a virtual center as $15 million start up and $51 million annual operations. Kristen asked me to brief Alex Azar (General Counsel for HHS) to see if we need any special authority/legislation (similar to BioShield) to make this work more quickly and smoother. She will be out for a week and then we will resume. I handled these calls and e-mails while on a quick trip to Chicago to give a talk at the Clinical Research 2004 meetings. I spoke on Emerging Infections.