Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Briefed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the State Dept. on the threat of Pandemic influenza. Also present were Sec/ Mike Leavitt, Rich McKeown, Bill Steiger, Julie Gerberding, Bruce Gellin, Bill Raub, Dan Singer, and a few Assist. Secs in DoS. We gave Dr. Rice a primer on Pandemic flu and also discussed the international implications, particularly related to the recent findings that migratory birds have brought H5N1 to chicken flocks in Siberia, Russia, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan and flyways will likely bring it to India and Europe. She was very gracious and was glad to see me again since I had briefed her a few times on HIV/AIDS and biodefense when she was at NSC August 19-28, 2005 – Very productive meeting of editorial board of Harrison’s Principles of internal Medicine (HPIM) – 17 and McGraw-Hill publishers at Spring Creek Ranch in Jackson Hole, WY to plan the 17th Edition that will be published in 2008. We returned there after our 1991 planning meeting for a prior edition. I am the editor-inchief for the 17th and I picked Jackson Hole. Great choice. Beautiful weather and above all, Bob and Colleen Grady have a beautiful home there and our girls stayed with them while Chris and I stayed at the Spring Creek Ranch. Did fishing (caught several cutthroat trout), hiking and just relaxing, although I worked every day (1 ½ day off) on the book. Very frightening experience when Bob, Colleen, Chris and the girls took a (supposedly 6 hour) 12 mile hike on the Teton Crest trail. A bit reckless on Colleen’s part in that we started late (1:45 PM) and would have cut it close to get to destination by nightfall. Trail we difficult, but incredibly beautiful. Unfortunately, we got lost (wrong turn) and lost >2 hours. We hiked the last hour+ in the dark. Alison was totally frightened. We saw up close several bull moose, mountain lion tracks and wolf tracks. Danger was being stranded in the woods overnight with temperatures going down to <40 F every night. We finally made it to the fire road and out by 9:25 PM.