[Email Exchange between Bruce Weniger and Don Francis]

haven't run that search.

This is so unnecessary, as NIH has so many
outstanding and accomplished vaccinologists who
could serve to create an experienced majority of
internal advirors, such as Robert Purcell (HepB vaccine),
Al Kapikian (rotavirus vaccine), Robert Chanock
(RSV, influenza, etc.), John Robbins (Hib vaccine),
etc. But none of these names have ever served on
the NIAID AIDS vaccine policymaking committees,
as far as I can tell.
It seems as if the NIAID immunology clique wants
to show the other parts of NIH with vaccinology or
virology experience that they can develop a vaccine, too,
but in an elegant, rational way taking advantage of
their understanding of immune function.
I think the origins of much of this overdominance
by theorists is that Science article a few years ago by
Bernie Fields's "AIDS: time to turn to basic science"
in Nature 1994 May 12;369(6476):95-6. He argued that
the failures in developing useful drugs to that date were
because we needed much more basic science knowledge
of what was going on. William Paul and others used to
cite this and I think were really influenced by it. Ironically,
Fields died shortly thereafter before the protease inhibitors
came on the scene undermining his pessimism that we had
too little knowledge for useful products to appear for this
disease.
The most valuable outcome of Jonathan's effort was
that Sandra Thurman understands and privately agrees with
all this, and has done so for quite some time (as a Carter
Center worker under Bill Foege et al.). She reportedly
relayed Jonathan's message to the President's advisors
right afterwards (I hear on the hearsay grapevine) with the
comment that "those guys at NIH are just so damn arrogant".
Her problem is that a $12Billion institution is just so powerful,
with influential beneficiaries in every congressional district,
that she needs to tread carefully and use outside bodies
like PACHA and Mann to make points she cannot make
publically.
The only way I can think of to keep the heat up is to
constantly point out how badly the effort they are leading
is doing. Jonathan's visit was a significant factor in making
possible a much stronger statement from the PACHA
(copy attached in WP. 6.1) than I ever would have dreamed
possible last week.
Dr. Satcher appeared before us, but I felt it was not
appropriate to raise the vaccine issue at this time during
the Q&A. He now commands a tremendous amount of
respect from all quarters inside the Admin and in the public.
I am quite confident that when the Secretary has to mediate

over possible NIH infighting to try to keep CDC out of the
AIDS vaccine development arena, he will be quite helpful in
this regard. He will have the ability to stand up to and
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