Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Briefed the NSS in the Situation Room with Heidi Avery leading (I had pre- contacted her explaining that I had to do the briefing and she agreed), Laura Holgate and Brian Kamoi from NSS, Kris Beardsley (more of her later), Francis Collins, Amy Patterson, Nancy Ann De Parle, Bill Shultz (HHS OGC), Bill Corr (Deputy HHS Sec.). Feb. 21-24, 2012 – had conversations and e-mail exchanges with Ron Fouchier trying to work out that he re-submit a manuscript and that the NSABB reconvene to review with the new data and the clarifications from Geneva. Also, spoke with Journal editors to try and get them to agree (which they did) to hold off on publication, but agree to quickly consider a revised manuscript. Of note, during the Feb. 22 Situation Room meeting, I outted Kris Beardsley as a “leak” to the NSABB. Paul Keim had asked how things were going right after we returned from Geneva (see e-mails on file). I told him that I was about to brief the WH on Feb. 22. He said good luck and that he already had spoken to Kris Beardsley. I did not return e-mail, but I was astounded. She is NSS!!!. Now it became clear that the NSABB people were directly trying to get to and agitate the WH through Kris and also with Mike Osterholm getting to Rick Weiss, the Press person for John Holdrin at OSTP. Rick is a former Washington Post reporter. I believe that Paul Keim is OK, but it is incredible that Kris Beardsley and Rick Weiss are doing this. In order to make sure that Kris would not undermine my presentation to Heidi and the NSS, I started my explanation (see summary above) by saying that I know that Paul Keim has briefed Kris about part of this a day or so ago, but I will give a little more information since I spoke with Ron after the WHO meeting and Paul did not. Kris almost fell through her chair and Heidi gave her a very mean look followed by a statement that we have only one point of contact with NSABB and that is Fauci. Clearly Heidi not only was not briefed by Kris, she had no idea and was extremely pissed that Kris had spoken about this with Paul. Paul is advisory to HHS and NIH and NOT to the White House. BTW, I have been completely wearing myself down by this getting virtually no sleep and doing 1000 things at a time that are very heavy, i.e. White House stuff, Press misinterpretation. Mike Osterholm acting in his usually hysterical manner, Laurie Garret getting it wrong as usual. OF GREAT IMPORTANCE: How is it possible that everyone got it wrong? Why did not anyone ever ask the “Fauci question” that I asked in Geneva of Ron. This includes the reviewers of the papers, the entire NSABB including the Chairman Paul Keim, the outside influenza expert called to advise the NSABB (Rob Webster), the editors of the Journal. After I briefed him, Bruce almost comically stated. “You know, I knew there was something funny here when I read the paper and found that after aerosol transmission, blood samples were taken from the ferrets for 12 days. If the ferrets all died in 3 days, did they take samples from dead animals?” Clearly his own editorial staff did not pick it up. There is plenty of blame to go around. Clearly Ron did not say in the manuscript that the aerosol-transmitted animals died, but he never said in the manuscript that they did not die. Clearly he was doing what many scientists do, i.e. play up their own data to make it seem exciting. Yet, he knew that the media were clearly getting it wrong. He will say that he was never given the chance to explain this to the NSABB and his only comments to the press that they clearly misunderstood were before the NSABB and he did not realize that they misunderstood. However, after the decision of the NSABB, he still spoke to the press, yet never made it explicit what really happened. He could claim that at that point he could not discuss the data since it was confidential and the press could not ask the specific question sine they did not see the data. It is clear to me that a lot of people are embarrassed for not asking the Fauci question and as human nature goes, people are running for cover and/or looking to blame someone. Ron is in danger of getting thrown under the bus when the press finds out that he never clarified things. As an example, ABS World News on Saturday PM, Feb 18 had a piece showing all aerosol-infected animals dying schematically on the screen with the ever-present Laurie Garret commenting that “This virus just should not be allowed to exist”. See Important e-mails below: Thursday, Feb. 24, 2012 11:26 AM Ron: In follow-up of our previous conversations, it is important for you to revise and expand your manuscript to include the important new data that were presented in Geneva. In addition (and this is critical), you need to make exceptionally clear the differences between the transmission studies and the pathogenicity studies, i.e. the response that you gave to me when I asked that direct question in Geneva whether there was any illness or death in the animals that had been infected by aerosol with the engineered highly pathogenic H5N1. You responded that some of these animals developed flu-like symptoms, all recovered, none got seriously ill and none died. This seems to be the key point about which many people were and are confused. It would be very important to make this exceptionally clear in the manuscript. There are also other important data that we discussed that would be important to include in a revised manuscript. I believe that the best course of action would be to resubmit this revised manuscript to the NSABB so that they have the opportunity to have all of the data that we discussed in Geneva in front of them as well as to directly question you in person in order to clarify any important points. Amy Patterson will request that the NSABB meet and review this manuscript. As I had mentioned to you, Francis Collins and I have spoken to Bruce Alberts about the importance of your having enough journal space to add the new data and a broader discussion of the issues. In our initial conversations with him, he seemed amenable to this approach. Obviously, we cannot know for sure what the journal decision will be. Francis and I will be speaking to Bruce again today (I hope) and we will bring this up to him. However, the important issue is that the NSABB have the opportunity to see the expanded manuscript as described above. I would be happy to discuss this further with you. Please give my office a call at your convenience at (301) 496-2263. I am not available between 12:00 and 12:30 PM and 3:30 – 4:00 PM Washington time. Best regards, Tony Anthony S. Fauci, MD Director National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Building 31, Room 7A-03 31 Center Drive, MSC 2520 National Institutes of Health Bethesda, MD 20892-2520 Phone: (301) 496-2263 FAX: (301) 496-4409 E-mail: afauci@niaid.nih.gov ______________________________________________ Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2012 to Paul Keim Paul: Line-up and tasks sound good to me. We should strategize by phone on how to handle discussion of the WHO meeting. I have a meeting at the White House tomorrow to brief the security people on the WHO meeting and the outcome of those discussions may impact our decision on how to handle this. We should talk after that. Best regards, Tony Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2012 from Paul Keim referencing Kris bearsdley Good luck with the meeting. I've prepping Kris today on the issues. Paul Keim, PhD TGen/NAU On Feb 21, 2012, at 5:41 PM, "Fauci, Anthony (NIH/NIAID) [E]" <AFAUCI@niaid.nih.gov> wrote: Paul: Line-up and tasks sound good to me. We should strategize by phone on how to handle discussion of the WHO meeting. I have a meeting at the White House tomorrow to brief the security people on the WHO meeting and the outcome of those discussions may impact our decision on how to handle this. We should talk after that. Best regards, Tony