Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Ron Fouchier flew in from Rotterdam to be on a panel tomorrow AM (Feb. 29) organized by American Society of Microbiology (ASM) to discuss this issue. Invited Ron over my house for dinner (rigatoni and sausage with tomato sauce) with Cliff Lane and Hugh Auchincloss to discuss the approach for tomorrow. Ron related to me that the NSABB never gave him a chance to explain his experiments and that he met them via teleconference. Clearly they were hostile to him and when his interview was over, Mike Osterholm started speaking before Ron signed off and Mike said (without knowing that Ron was still on the line) that Ron was a “liar”. Ron stayed on the line in secret and described what sounded like a major ad hominem to Ron. After intense discussion with me before and during the dinner, Ron Finally got it that he has to be very clear tomorrow that the ferrets who got infected by aerosol transmission did not get very ill (flu-like sxs at worst), all recovered and NONE died. Only animals who got 1 million infectious doses of H5N1 directly inserted into the trachea died. It is clear that everyone NSABB, all the pundits who commented (Laurie Garret, Tom Ingelsby, Richard Ebright, D.A. Henderson, etc.) and the press thought that after aerosol transmission, the ferrets died. We had long discussions about future experiments and upcoming issues. Later in the dinner, Bruce Alberts (Editor of Science) flew in from San Francisco, called my cell phone to let me know he arrived, and I invited him over for the remainder of the dinner.