[Memo to Scott Hitt from Alexandra M. Levine]

8 --710/9 1r31 [phone] -> Bruoe Weziger (, 002/002
MEMORANDUM
TO: Scott Hitt, M.D.
Chair, Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS
FROM: Alexandra M. Levine, M.D.
Chair, Research Sub-Committee
DATE: June 10, 1996
IN RE: A CHANGE IN ONE OF OUR RECOMMENDATIONS
During our meeting in April, the Research Council made a "broad" recommendation
regarding vaccine development, which was subsequently approved by the full Council.
Our 4th recommendation originally stated: "An expedited program to produce an AIDS
vaccine--targeted to fill gaps in knowledge, product development, and testing--should be
supported. This role would best be filled by a non-profit international AIDS vaccine initiative,
which should be strongly supported by US Government contributions of funding, expertise, and
other resources, as well as by philanthropic, private sector and multinational donors".
Unfortunately, we later saw that our language had been misinterpreted, in a manner which
we did not foresee. We had NO intention of EXCLUDING all of the other mechanisms whereby
vaccine development could occur, such as the NIH, academia, private sector and so forth. We
therefore have met via conference call on several occasions, and have revised the initial language,
to better reflect our true intentions. The revised language is given below, for our review and
discussion as a full Council:
NEW LANGUAGE:
4. All agencies of the U.S. Government with experience in various phases of vaccine research
and development--including NIH with its lead role in basic research, DoD, FDA, CDC,
and the VA--have valuable roles to play and should contribute their unique institutional
expertise, capabilities, resources, and collaborative relationships in a coordinated and
expedited Federal effort towards the common goal to produce an effective preventive
vaccine for AIDS. In addition--recognizing the need for public-private partnerships and
the involvement of other nations in a global effort, and the relative advantage of privatesector, non-profit organizations in rapidly filling gaps in targeted vaccine research, product
development, and testing--the concept of an independent international AIDS vaccine
initiative should be strongly encouraged and developed.

I apologize for this error, and hope that we haven't caused too much loss of time and energy in
the process of clarifying our intentions. We ask that the new language be discussed, and hopefully
approved, by the full Council.
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