Thursday, July 2, 2015

Today I appeared on the Diane Rehm Show where I did somewhat of a debate with Dr. Robert Sears, a pediatrician from California who was concerned about the law recently signed by Gov. Brown in California. On the show with me was Liz Szabo from the newspaper USA Today. In addition, there was a pediatrician who is an expert in parental response to vaccines for their children. Her name is Dr. Allison Kemp. The show went very well and it was clear that Dr. Sears misrepresented certain facts and cherry-picked information for his own advantage. Following the interview, when I got back to my office, I received several e-mails telling me that I did a very nice job in being balanced in my approach. There has been an additional case of Ebola in Liberia. A 17-year-old boy was found dead and was shown by PCR to have had Ebola. Since then, there has been an additional case or two. Therefore, we are concerned that this may be the beginning of another outbreak in Liberia and perhaps in other West African countries. Drew Faust, President of Harvard had e-mailed me a couple of days ago to ask me for suggestions for Dean of Harvard School of Public Health to replace Julio Frenk who had left to become President of University of Miami. I gave her several names and then she responded this AM thanking me and telling me that she had just watched “Larry Kramer: In Love and Anger “ (HB0) and this was her comment to me: I spent the evening tonight watching the Larry Kramer HBO documentary in which you figure so prominently—and impressively. The footage throughout is amazing, (I kept thinking what it would be like to have such a record of the Civil War…), and the story both tragic and triumphant. I was powerfully struck by your comment towards the end about how Act Up permanently changed everything in how officials, the state and organized medicine deal with patient communities. The film will remain in my mind for a long time… Very best, Drew