Monday, December 8, 2014

I am getting particularly concerned with what I feel is noncollegial behavior on the part of the UK, particularly Dame Sally Davies (Chief Health Officer of UK) as well as the Oxford group personified by Adrian Hill and Jeremy Ferrar who are bad mouthing our randomized controlled trial idea behind our backs. However, this is the stuff that we deal with all the time. I am also getting concerned that the incidence of infection of Ebola in Liberia is so low that this may have an issue with our conduct of the randomized controlled trial in Liberia. Cliff will leave Dec. 10 for Liberia for the third time in 5 weeks. We have to consider the possibility of doing a trial also in Sierra Leone. Had contentious IC Director meeting concerning the issue of presenting reports (that I believe are flawed) to the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) on the Intramural research Program (IRP) and the AIDS Portfolio. Issue is that some outside group (ACD) want to homogenize the IRP to make it “trans-NIH” as opposed to being directed to the mandate of the IC in question. I am totally against this since this flies in the face of the NIAID mandate of being a “strike force” for emerging IDs such as AIDS, SARS, and Ebola. People like Eric Green (NHGRI) disagree with me. I do not like or trust Eric as I believe that he resents me because he is intimidated by my accomplishments and notoriety. That is life. Also, the “elephant” in the room with the distribution of the AIDS money by OAR that no one wants to address is that NIDA is spending about $180 million on drug abuse issues when ~7% of USA cases are drug abuse and one can stop this with needle exchange. I feel they should get some money, but not that much when we do not have enough to conduct vaccine trials that could end the pandemic.