Anthony Fauci

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Lore & Background

During the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Fauci was one of the leading researchers. In 1981, he and his team began looking for a vaccine or treatment. In October 1988, protesters came to the NIAID, and Fauci bore the brunt of anger from the LGBTQ+ community. Leading AIDS activist Larry Kramer called him an 'incompetent idiot' and a 'pill-pushing' tool of the medical establishment. Fauci did not have control over drug approval, but he made an effort in the late 1980s to reach out to the LGBTQ+ community in New York and San Francisco. He helped make experimental AIDS treatments more accessible. Kramer, who had spent years hating Fauci, eventually called him 'the only true and great hero' among government officials during the AIDS crisis. Fauci was the main architect of PEPFAR, an HIV/AIDS program responsible for saving over 20 million lives in the developing world. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he served under President Donald Trump on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and his advice was frequently contradicted by Trump. Under President Joe Biden, he served as chief medical advisor and his advice was generally supported.

Reader's Guide

Anthony Fauci's significance lies in his decades-long leadership of NIAID and his role as a consistent spokesperson for science across seven presidencies. He made foundational contributions to understanding HIV pathogenesis and developed therapies for formerly fatal vasculitic diseases. He discovered how to re-dose cancer drugs in a way that turned a 98 percent mortality rate of the disorder vasculitis into a 93 percent remission rate. His work on PEPFAR earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008. During the COVID-19 pandemic, his advice was frequently contradicted by President Trump, and Trump's supporters alleged he was trying to politically undermine Trump's re-election. Under the Biden administration, his advice was generally supported. On Biden's last full day in office, Fauci was issued a preemptive pardon covering potential federal offenses between January 1, 2014, and January 19, 2025. His legacy includes both praise for his scientific leadership and criticism over what some said was a delayed response from the U.S. government to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Did You Know?

• Fauci captained his high school basketball team despite standing only 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m) tall.
• He graduated first in his class from Cornell Medical College in 1966.
• Fauci was the 13th most-cited scientist among 2.5 to 3.0 million authors worldwide from 1983 to 2002.
• He discovered how to re-dose cancer drugs to turn a 98 percent mortality rate for vasculitis into a 93 percent remission rate.
• On Biden's last full day in office, Fauci was issued a preemptive pardon covering potential federal offenses from January 1, 2014, to January 19, 2025.

Roots in Brooklyn: A Childhood Forged by Family and Faith

Anthony Stephen Fauci was born on December 24, 1940, in Brooklyn Hospital in Downtown Brooklyn, New York City. His father, Stephen, was a pharmacist who graduated from Columbia University and owned a pharmacy in Dyker Heights. His mother, Eugenia Abys, worked at a dry cleaner. On his father's side, Fauci was descended from immigrants from Sciacca, Sicily. His maternal grandparents were from Naples, Italy. His maternal grandmother, Raffaella Trematerra, was a seamstress, and his maternal grandfather, Giovanni Abys, was a Swiss-born landscape and portrait artist noted for his magazine illustrations in Italy. As a child, Fauci, together with his mother and older sister, worked at the register of his father's pharmacy. The pharmacy was directly beneath the family apartment. He was raised Catholic. He attended Regis High School, a competitive Jesuit school in Manhattan's Upper East Side, where he captained the school's basketball team despite standing only 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m) tall. He decided mid-way through high school to become a physician, graduating in 1958. After high school, Fauci enrolled at the College of the Holy Cross, which he recalled as having 'an extraordinary reputation for premedical work'. He studied classical Greek there and worked in a construction gang during the summers. As an undergraduate, his courses focused on philosophy, French, Greek, and Latin. He graduated from Holy Cross in 1962 with a Bachelor of Arts in classics and pre-med studies, then attended medical school at Cornell University, where he graduated first in his class with a Doctor of Medicine from the Cornell Medical College in 1966. At Cornell, he focused on adult internal medicine, mainly infectious diseases and the immune system.

A Lifelong Pursuit of the Immune System

After completing his medical residency in 1968, Fauci joined the National Institutes of Health as a clinical associate in the NIAID's Laboratory of Clinical Investigation. He became head of the LCI's Clinical Physiology Section in 1974, and in 1980 was appointed chief of the NIAID's Laboratory of Immunoregulation. He became director of the NIAID in 1984. Fauci has been offered the position of director of the NIH several times, but has declined each time. He has made important scientific observations that contributed to the understanding of the regulation of the human immune response and is recognized for delineating the mechanisms whereby immunosuppressive agents adapt to that response. He developed therapies for formerly fatal diseases such as polyarteritis nodosa, granulomatosis with polyangiitis, and lymphomatoid granulomatosis. In a 1985 Stanford University Arthritis Center Survey, members of the American Rheumatism Association ranked Fauci's work on the treatment of polyarteritis nodosa and granulomatosis with polyangiitis as one of the most important advances in patient management in rheumatology over the previous 20 years. Fauci discovered how to re-dose cancer drugs in a way that turned a 98 percent mortality rate of the disorder vasculitis into a 93 percent remission rate. He has contributed to the understanding of how HIV destroys the body's natural defense system, progressing to AIDS. He has outlined the mechanisms of induction of HIV expression by endogenous cytokines. In 2003, the Institute for Scientific Information stated that from 1983 to 2002, 'Fauci was the 13th most-cited scientist among the 2.5 to 3.0 million authors in all disciplines throughout the world who published articles in scientific journals.'

At the Front Lines of Every Outbreak

Fauci has been at the forefront of U.S. efforts to contend with viral diseases like HIV/AIDS, SARS, the Swine flu, MERS, Ebola, and COVID-19. He played a significant role in the early 2000s in creating the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and in driving development of biodefense drugs and vaccines following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In a meeting with reporters on September 17, 2009, Fauci predicted that the H1N1 virus causing the 2009 swine flu pandemic could infect as many as one in three Americans. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci served under President Donald Trump as one of the lead members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. His advice was frequently contradicted by Trump, and Trump's supporters alleged that Fauci was trying to politically undermine Trump's run for re-election in 2020. Under the Biden administration, Fauci served as one of the lead members of the White House COVID-19 Response Team and as Biden's chief medical advisor, during which time his advice was generally supported. He served as an advisor to every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan. As a government scientist under seven presidents, Fauci has been described as 'a consistent spokesperson for science, a person who more than any other figure has brokered a generational peace' between the two worlds of science and politics.

Honors, Controversy, and a Final Pardon

Fauci was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2005 for pioneering HIV pathogenesis research and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008 for his work on PEPFAR, an AIDS relief program, by President George W. Bush. He has been a visiting professor at many medical centers and has received numerous honorary doctorates from universities in the U.S. and abroad. On Biden's last full day in office, Fauci was issued a preemptive pardon covering potential federal offenses between January 1, 2014, and January 19, 2025. Fauci was criticized over what some said was a delayed response from the U.S. government to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, including delays in the promotion of experimental HIV/AIDS drugs. In 2014, Sean Strub of HuffPost criticized Fauci for 'delaying promotion of an AIDS treatment that would have prevented tens of thousands of deaths in the first years of the epidemic' and accused him of 'rewriting history'. Political commentator Helen Andrews defended Fauci's actions during the epidemic in a 2021 article, writing that his most notorious error was a 1983 paper suggesting 'routine close contact, as within a family household,' might spread the disease, but it was an understandable mistake given what was known at the time and he corrected it within a year.