MAR-B-11
IN MY UNEXPECTED WEEK AT HOME,
I HAVE AN UNANTICIPATED EVENING
WITH THE RICH AND FAMOUS IN A BLACK TIE AWARDS DINNER THAT FINDS
ME CHATTING WITH AN UNUSUAL
GROUP OF PEOPLE, MANY OF WHOM ARE HOUSEHOLD NAMES AND QUITE
RECOGNIZABLE FROM COVER STORIES
ABOUT THEM IN LARGELY RECENT PAST POWER
POSITIONS
Mar. 12, 2002
As I am not in Cuba, I have a whole week of unscheduled time to sort my pictures, fill in the story of both Mindanao and Malawi and see what I an do to purge the email list of the 2600 incoming messages. I got started on this when I noticed an invitation to a grand affair. Since I was already here, I said yes.
The National Foundation for infectious Diseases has had a black tie dinner for Awardees, and gets contributions form big drug companies and other donors, and annually gives out an award for humanitarian activity and basic science medical achievement. The latter is named after Maxwell Finland, of Boston City hospital, one of the founding gurus of ID. But the former is given to the likes of Jimmy and Rosalind Carter, the first awardees, and a string of congressmen and Surgeons General, and political or donor magnates. This years awardees? Bill and Melinda Gates, coincident with their pictures and cover stories being on Newsweek and Time for a newcomer philanthropy giving 28 billion dollars to sort out some of the diseases of poverty. One of these beneficiaries is the Department of Microbiology and Tropical Medicine, of which I am professor. So, I pulled out the tux, and walked through the rain to my office where I changed into black tie and took Metro to Capital Hilton.
I sat with colleagues from the long-term surgical infection lecture circuit, and we had a number of meetings and greetings with friends and famous folk. First on my list was Chick Koop, with whom I have met in frequent venues from the Calvin lecture series to the BVI medical symposium. We talked about his horrible year in which he had everything form kidney failure to sepsis, but has recovered and is going to the BVI this spring. He was an earlier winner of this award, and was here in black tie. I turned to someone at random and asked the man to take our picture together. He did, but said, “I always said I was a far better photographer than Senator!” It turned out to be Senator Sweichert, who is more used to having his picture taken than taking pictures of an unknown.
David
Satcher, outgoing Surgeon General and I had run a 10K race together once when
he was head of CDC. He had an
opportunity to become Dean of the School of Public health here at GW, which he
really wanted to do, and only his wife persuaded him to go back to Atlanta,
where he will head up the primary care Foundation. As we were talking a fellow came up who looked vaguely familiar,
and I thought his name was Todd, but he asked Satcher questions about AIDS and
Africa, and he said “Ask him! He has
just come back from Africa.”
So, the friendly fellow did
ask me, and seemed genuinely interested as I told him about my experiences in
Malawi. He said he would like to learn
more about it and gave me his card. It
is Donald Graham, Chairman of the Board Washington Post. I did get
back to him, and I sent him some of the stories about the Malawi experience,
inviting him to ask for more (see Mar-B-7)
I had just parted form him when he latched on to someone whom I
recognize well, and they came over to me where I took their picture together.
Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalind came to the head table. I had not thought much of Jimmy Carter as president, and was in Georgia the night he beat Gerald Ford—when everyone was kissing each other as I was on my way to do a lecture gig, and made a small sign—“Do not kiss me; I come from Grand Rapids Michigan!” However, I changed my mind about Jimmy Carter after his presidency when I said he is “The Best Former President We Have Ever Had.” I read his book, “An Outdoor Journal” and recognized this as a kindred spirit, not written as “as told to.” But his Habitat for Humanity and his activities with the Global Health Council have made me impressed with his leadership after his term of office.
We spoke for longer than I had expected to, since he asked me questions since he and I had both just been in Malawi. I had returned two days before and he had been back just yesterday, touring with Rosalind and Bill Gates, Sr. head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He asked me my impression of African AIDS and I told him it was the second biggest problem they had, since I saw excess fertility and population pressures leading to permanent starvation conditions. Rosalind picked up and added that she thought this was true. Later, Jimmy Carter introduced the Gateses, and pointed out that he does not make that many speeches anymore, but that he had talked with the South African President Mbeke, who does not believe that HIV causes AIDS and that the AIDS drugs are toxic, so he is the biggest impediment to any kind of prevention programs in South Africa. I thought that this was not only right on, but also courageous, and without the waffling of diplomatic nicety needed because a black head of an African state can utter any kind of nonsense he wold like to.
I moved on after only a handshake from Bill Gates and a few words with Melinda who had said that she had made a trip to Africa a few years ago to see the animals as a tourist, and she had noted that when they were driving they had encountered women, lots of women, with babies on their backs and these women were walking! She then noted that not only were they walking but that they had no shoes!
Well, we all come into this at different levels, and this would hardly be a surprise to someone like me, but then I am not at entry level. Besides, I did not have the resources of the world’s richest couple to target the problems of the world’s poorest. Melinda went on in her more elaborate speech about being the mother of two children and with a new one on the way, she was concerned about their futures. Bill came on and gave much the inferior speech, but was versed in the numbers, as a good nerd should be, saying that philanthropy cannot do the job, but that it could only work if governments got interested in trying to improve the lots of their people and that is what his foundation would be trying to leverage. He ended by thanking the NFID for the award, and saying that now he was gong to try to earn it.
So, my evening with the rich and famous, included me—neither quite so rich, nor not nearly so famous, still I have a bit more in the hands-on business of humanitarian aid than most of those former shakers and doers present. I talked with a few whom I knew, like former Florida Congressman Paul Roger who had been a GW commencement speaker as “Mister Health”, and old friends of mine---Terry Hancock who had first met me when we wold go to the lab at NIH when I was transplanting lungs, Frank Tally, part of my Surgical infections brigade. Bill Ledger, Ob/Gyn ID who had been my teacher and radio interviewer at UMMC now thirty four years ago, and Tony Fauci, my old friend and AIDS guru from NIH.
So, back through the rain into the Metro, I had a chance to come out of one environment and back into another reality, having just had a super heavy dose of that reality in Mindanao and Malawi all within the same month as a black tie dinner with a lot of folk who talk a lot about poverty, but had got down and dirty with it less often in their whole lives than I had in the past weeks.