Monday, September 13, 2004

For the past few weeks, I have been involved in a number of briefings of Carol Kuntz and Stewart Simonson regarding Biodefense and the concern about the emergence of an H5N1 bird flu that has been smoldering in Asia (Thailand, Viet Nam, China, Taiwan, etc) with jumping of cases from chickens to humans. President Clinton had quadruple bypass surgery at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital related to unstable angina this past week. I contacted Senator Clinton’s office to get his private e-mail address to send him my personal best wishes. Today, I had an official briefing at the White House for Carol Kuntz and Bruce Miller (her deputy) on research plans and strategy for countermeasures for “Genetically Engineered Microbes”. The presentation was very well received. Carol gave me a “redlined” copy of the Bioshield Legislation that was signed by President Bush and VP Cheney as a special gift from them to me due to my work on the development and passage of BioShield.