FAUCI DIARY ARCHIVE — Sunday, January 15, 2012 https://faucisdiary.com/diary/2012-01-15 Text below is verbatim from the released PDFs, with the original line breaks. ============================================================================== DIARY ENTRY — Sunday, January 15, 2012 Source: Diary Prequel, pp. 267–268 of 2026.07.27_Diary-Prequel-.pdf Words: 617 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I still believe that there is no reason for the Journals insisting that the papers (redacted) need to be published by end of Jan/early Feb. Why not wait until this mess in openly discussed in an “Asilomar-like” setting. Jan. 16 – 21, 2012 - Major development pushed by my decision to be much more proactive in this process. Too many people were posturing and playing the “sound bite game” – Richard Ebright (who is a complete asshole), Mike Osterholm (with whom I am becoming progressively more disillusioned with due to his hysteria) and other well-meaning people who just like to comment, like D.A. Henderson. I never liked the fact that the journals (Science and Nature) were on a fast track to publish when we still did not know how we were going to develop a system to get the unredacted manuscripts only to “those who had a legitimate scientific need to know”. We were getting significant pressure from the White House via HHS to make sure that there are no surprises with other such projects appearing. In addition, additional data were leaking out from Ron Fouchier’s group having WH/HHS asking whether we should be shutting off their funding. I became concerned over the possibility that outside (non-scientific) influences would force us to set a bad precedent and stop funding these flu projects. Therefore, I took the bull by the horns and contacted Fouchier and strongly suggested that he and the flu scientists call a moratorium (60 days) on all work dealing with increased transmissibility and/or virulence of highly pathogenic H5N1 virus. At first, Fouchier was reluctant to do so since he felt that this would be an admission that what he did was dangerous and that he was backing down. He totally disagrees with the NSABB recommendations. In addition, I felt and told this to many in the press that we need to get more international involvement in this situation with WHO playing a major role. I felt that people were concerned that this was too much of a USA-centric situation and the USG was driving things that affect many others outside of USA. I agree. Therefore I agitated and accomplished that WHO (Keiji Fukuda) should hold a meeting in Geneva to add an international component to this situation. Importantly, on Wednesday, Feb. 18 I called Ron Fouchier in his home in Rotterdam (actually I e-mailed him and asked him to call me) at 4:30 PM DC time – 10:30 PM Rotterdam time. I strongly suggested that he call a moratorium on this work and encourage his flu colleagues to also do so. He was not totally convinced and said that he would consult with the others tomorrow (Feb. 19) AM and get back to me. I emphasized that it is likely if he does not do it voluntarily that forces beyond our control (i.e. the security people) would force us to defund the work. The next morning he called me and said that they had agreed to call a moratorium for 60 days and see what the Geneva meeting brings. Furthermore, Francis Collins and I called Bruce Alberts (Science) and Phil Campbell (Nature) and convinced them to delay the publication until at least March. Fouchier came out with a press statement on Feb 20 and Francis Collins and I came out with an NIH statement the same day applauding their decision. This was a good example of my having to take the bull by the horns since things were not going in the right direction. Now we wait to see what happens. There was wide coverage in the press about this “breakthrough” in negotiations with big stories in Washington Post, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, etc.