The FAIR Foundation is dedicated to fair and equitable distributions of Nation Institutes of Health (NIH) research funds for all diseases, including the sixteen that kill more Americans than AIDS.

When HepCop (Hepatitis C Oversight Partnership) petitions the Office of Government Ethics to investigate this misappropriation of HCV funds they need you as a fellow petitioner and member of HepCop. Please join with FAIR's CEO and many others in this effort by signing up for HepCop at http://www.hcvets.com/NIH/PressRelease/0904.asp.

We recommend that you send your letter stating your strong objections to the misappropriated funds to the Acting NIH Director with a Cc to Anthony Fauci, MD. Also file a complaint with the Office of Government Ethics (OGE).

As Director of the NIH's NIAID--the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Fauci is charged with overseeing research efforts to battle HIV and HCV; however Dr. Fauci is America’s top HIV/AIDS researcher and his focus is on HIV patients and HIV/HCV co-infected patients, not on mono-infected HCV patients.

You may wish to questionable the appropriateness of having a Director with a bias for HIV in charge of the NIAID, especially when he, Dr. Fauci, has taken $183,595 from the paltry $93 million HCV budget for his HIV/HCV co-infection study when $2.9 billion is available to draw from in the HIV budget.

You may also wish to recommend to the NIH Acting Director that he replace Dr. Fauci with a Director who has no bias for HIV, or indeed, for HCV—an unbiased person in charge who would allocate funds more fairly.

Raynard S. Kington, M.D., Ph.D.
Acting Director: National Institutes of Health
Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD
Bldg 1, Room 328
1 Center Drive
Bethesda, MD 20892

and Cc it to

Anthony Fauci, MD, Director, NIAID
Mail Stop Code 2520, Building 31, Room 7A03
31 Center Drive
Bethesda, MD 20892

OGE letter to
Robert Cusick, Director
United States Office of Government Ethics
1201 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20005-3917

You may also wish to write directly to, or Cc your letters to the following and ask that they intervene to correct this unfair situation for mono-infected HCV patients.

Holli Beckerman Jaffe, JD
Director, NIH Ethics Office
Room BE-21, Bldg. 2, MSC 0201
2 Center Drive
Bethesda, MD 20892-0201

Rich Smith, CEO & President
American Liver Foundation
75 Maiden Lane
Suite 603
New York, NY 10038

The Honorable Chuck Grassley
135 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-1501

Congressman Jesse L. Jackson
2419 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington DC 20515-1302

John Stossel
ABC 20/20

Thank you for your advocacy and for helping us obtain fair and equitable funding for HCV!