Nick Pyenson

I, unfortunately, was banished because I had stood up.

And so I didn't even get to see Nim when he came back.

And I was, yeah, I was a mess.

I'll try to say it without getting mad.

This is the hardest thing for me to do without anger.

LEMSET was the medical facility that pulled all the gems from small institutes like ours.

They pulled our grants.

They had a multi-billion dollar deal with the government and acquired all our gems.

And I was very fortunate to actually wind up doing something that I dreamed about doing when I was a 10-year-old.

I wanted to get involved in a field called laboratory animal medicine, which is a specialty in veterinary medicine.

And when a position came up at LEMSIP, I jumped at the opportunity to go there.

And I was just astounded that I could actually work with monkeys and chimpanzees involved in infectious disease research.

And I felt this was the place I needed to be.

And I was there for nine years.

When I came on board, this laboratory was celebrated because it was involved in the creation of the first hepatitis B vaccines that were used in human beings.

And there was also a relatively new project to create the first AIDS vaccine for humans.

And the HIV vaccine was able to live in human beings.

and chimpanzees, and those are the only two species.

So there was a great deal of hope that the chimpanzee would be the breakthrough model to create the first HIV vaccine.

And we actually infected the animals with HIV virus.