Wednesday, January 4, 2006

Met with David Rubenstein, Founder and CEO of The Carlyle Group. He made me an amazing offer to join the firm as head of a Medical Venture Capital component of the Group. Compensation projected to be in the millions per year with a base salary of $1 million! Obvious question is whether I want to get out of the classical scientific/public servant arena. Jan. 26-29, 2006 – Attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland to participate in 2 events: 1) a dinner panel discussion on Pandemic Influenza and 2) a plenary panel moderated by Ira Flatow (NPR – “Science Friday”) on Pandemic Influenza. Other panel members included David Nabarro of WHO, David Stout of Glaxo-Smith Klein, the Minister of Health of Spain. The meeting was unexpectedly enjoyable in that I went to “close-up” panel discussions, breakfasts etc with people like President Muschaaraf of Pakistan, President Karzai of Afghanistan, Bill Gates, Bono, Queen Rana of Jordan, Bill Clinton, a number of journalists, etc. I was particularly impressed by leaders such as Karzai and Muschaaraf. The activity and press interest in Pandemic Flu has calmed down somewhat with other issues in the news (Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito confirmation, Iraq, the Hamas election victory in Palestine, etc.) Yet I still did a few CNN broadcasts from Davos.