Friday, September 7, 2012

As part of the kick-off of the “Celebration of Science” weekend here in D.C. and at NIH sponsored by Michael Milken, I was on a 2 man panel run by Greg Simon, formerly of Faster Cures”. The panel (filmed for TV) was on the science and real world of HIV/AIDS. My co-panelist was Magic Johnson. It was a fun experience. He is a wonderful guy with an amazingly infectious smile. He commented to the audience during the panel that he wanted to go on a “road show” with me since I explain “stuff” so well. He said that I “…really get it and can speak to the common man”. We spoke about basketball and baseball. We spoke about our children. His son is at NYU, and loves NYC as do Jenny and Megan. He has another son who works for him in his Company/Foundation. His daughter is a High School student in L.A. He is part-owner of the L.A. Dodgers and we spoke about how good the Washington Nationals are this year (see above). Sept 8-12, 2012 – The past few days have been very intense, but exciting. Following the Celebration of Science meeting in Washington DC, I immediately went up to Boston to deliver the opening plenary lecture at the 2012 AIDS vaccine meeting. It was extremely well received. Following my talk Gov. Deval Patrick got up and welcomed the audience to Boston and made the comment that it was an honor to be on the same stage with Dr. Tony Fauci and the thanked me for my service to the country. Over the past few days that has been continued activity concerning the dual use research of concern issue particularly regarding highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza virus. I had a conversation with Heidi Avery of the National Security Staff on September 12 during which she encouraged me to continue to try and find the right balance between safety and security as well as the benefits of doing such research. Heidi has always been a very good friend to me and she informs me that she will be leaving the national security staff to go back to her major post at the CIA. We have a major meeting coming up in December, 2012 to discuss the moratorium on H5N1 research. This should be an important meeting to set general principles of the types of research that should or should not be done. I have really enjoyed working with Heidi over the past few years.