Monday, April 4, 2005

Amazing day at White House today. Briefed the President on AIDS (domestic and International). Reason for briefing was preparation by the WH for the reauthorization of the Ryan White AIDS Care Act originally passed in 1990. The POTUS wanted to make sure that we were not short-changing domestic AIDS in light of all of the money (PEPFAR) that we have recently been putting into international. Briefing from 9:20 AM to 10:05 AM. The POTUS walked into room and immediately greeted me and although the briefing was supposed to be predominantly on Ryan White, he asked me many questions for about 20 minutes. It was a 2-way conversation between him and me. At the meeting also were VP Cheney, Scooter Libby, Andy Card, Karl Rove, Dan Bartlett, Scott McClellan, Josh Bolten, Kristen Silverberg, Secretary Leavitt, Claude Allen, Joe O’Neill, Philo Hall, Tevi Troy. Wonderful interaction between me and POTUS…great day Also, today I went to and presented a major lecture at the IOM Pandemic Influenza meeting in honor of John La Montagne. After that I got briefed by the IOM committee reviewing the HIVNET012 trial (see Fishbein above). They totally agreed with us and said the trial was effective, ethical, and safe. Went back to WH to brief Claude Allen on Influenza together with Stewart Simonson, Julie Gerberding, Philo Hall, Dean Casey, Tevi troy, Kristen Silverberg. This was in preparation of Secretary Leavitt and I briefing the POTUS on Wednesday , April 6. However, the POTUS meeting will be postponed until next week since the POTUS will go to Rome for the Funeral of Pope John Paul II. April 4 – 27, 2005 – More of the same with Fishbein situation. IOM panel report came out very clearly supporting all that NIAID and we had been saying about HIVNET-012. In typical fashion, John Solomon of AP and Sen Grassley (who parrots everything that AP says) are claiming that the IOM panel report is invalid since some members of the panel receive NIH grants and so are conflicted. The Fishbein/Grassley/AP axis is clearly one of the most unethical and disgraceful situations that I have ever experienced. They all have no integrity and absolutely no regard for the truth. We are now working on a possible settlement with Fishbein to make this craziness go away. He may well ask for totally undeliverable conditions. The DHHS is still reluctant to allow us to fire Fishbein because they are afraid of Grassley.