Friday, July 29, 2005

Another amazing day. Spent a couple of hours together with Julie Gerberding and Bruce Gellin at DHHS again pre-briefing Sec. Leavitt for the visit with the POTUS. Then went to White House and briefed the POTUS for 1 hour on Pandemic Flu in the Roosevelt Room. The POTUS was very engaged and went back and forth in an animated and interested way with Julie and me and the Secretary. He vowed to do whatever is necessary to stop the onset of a Pandemic Influenza. He turned to Josh Bolten (OMB Director) and indicated that no expense should be spared. He essentially gave us a mandate to take care of this problem in no uncertain terms. Present at the briefing were: VP Cheney, Karl Rove, John Bolten, Andy Card, Harriet Meiers, Fran Townsend, Kristen Silverberg, Dan Bartlett, Scott McClellan, Mike Chertoff, Tevi Troy, Julie Gerberding, Sec Leavitt, and others. In the late afternoon, I showed around the NIH Michael Gerson who was with Miss America Nicole Johnson Baker and her husband Scott Baker. He was visiting the NIH to look around and get a feel for the place. We presented an HIV-infected IL-2 patient (Terry Brown) and discussed our IL-2 work. Then we went across the street and discussed malaria with Tom Wellums. Mike Gerson is very interested in domestic AIDS. He will get back to me to work on this since he wants to put an initiative of this sort into the 2006 State of the Union Address. Very successful meeting.