‘Tony Was Always a Very Clear Voice’: Colleagues Bid Fond … – Medpage Today

As his last days as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) wind down, Anthony Fauci, MD, is remembered by his infectious disease and public health colleagues as an excellent scientist and clinician who saved millions of lives and truly cared about patients.

Several of those colleagues shared their memories of Fauci — many from the very early days of their careers — with MedPage Today. They praised his gift for public speaking, his intelligence, his dedication to patients, and spoke of the privilege of watching him become the public health leader he is today.

Paul Offit, MD, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

My research life has been in the world of rotaviruses, and I first started working on rotaviruses in the early 1980s. At the same time that I was doing that, NIAID was also working on rotaviruses. In fact, they were the first, in collaboration with Wyeth, to make a rotavirus vaccine. So I’ve known Tony for 40 years.

That vaccine had a problem. It was only on the market for about 10 months before it was taken off because of an issue with safety. And Tony was always a very clear voice: if there was a problem with safety, he wanted to identify it and figure out how common or rare it was, and deal with it. He impressed me right from the beginning, that he wanted to get the facts about this and then deal with the facts. His sense of judgment, his intelligence, his knowledge of rotavirus, even though he wasn’t necessarily a rotavirus researcher — that really impressed me.

But I think the thing that impressed me the most about Tony was the first time I heard him speak. I was in my early 30s and had never heard anybody speak that clearly. He told a story. He took a basic science talk and made it a compelling story. He drew you right in. His language and his ability to express difficult scientific concepts was just brilliant. I’d never heard anybody that clear and that compelling as a speaker. So ever since then, I sort of modeled myself after his talks, because I never thought it was possible to be able to tell a story with a basic science talk. But he did that.

William Schaffner, MD, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee

Tony Fauci and I both are graduates of Cornell University Medical College (now Weill Cornell), I in 1962 and he in 1966. As infectious disease colleagues, this mutual background has added to our genial acquaintance.

Over the years, I have had the pleasure of joining Tony in a number of educational presentations. He always is completely prepared, his messages are science-based and clearly stated, and he is generous in sharing the podium with the other participants. He occasionally allows his deft sense of humor to peek out from behind his usually serious demeanor and then his eyes light up and you get the benefit of his smile.

Tony is universally respected by the infectious disease and public health communities for his scientific and clinical contributions, for his sustained leadership of the NIAID, and for his always diplomatic public advocacy for science-based public health policy. During his challenging time in the early phases of the COVID pandemic, he became a “household name,” indeed, a public hero. A colleague sent me a T-shirt with his portrait on it. I wear it proudly.

Robert Wachter, MD, University of California San Francisco

There are so many impressive things about Tony. I was program director of the International AIDS Conference in San Francisco in 1990, and I remember the activists brutalizing him, calling him responsible for the deaths of thousands of people because research was moving along slowly. He took it all in, listened respectfully to what the activists had to say, and ultimately moved the system to expedite drug development – which ended up saving tens of thousands of lives.

I had a sense of déjà vu watching him deal with all of the lunacy around him when COVID hit. He immediately understood the politics and the science, and the critical role that he would have in speaking truth to the public and to power.

My favorite Fauci meme is the Fauci Scale – five pictures of Tony’s face during various moments in 2020 (I’d guess that the Fauci 1.0 is from 2021, after the inauguration). I often start my talks by asking the audience how they’re doing, and then showing them where I am on the Fauci Scale.

He’s a national hero.

Steven Sharfstein, MD, president emeritus, Sheppard Pratt Health System, Baltimore

Forty-one years ago I would round with Tony and his team of clinician-researchers at the NIAID as the consultation psychiatrist from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The patients suffered from a variety of relatively rare immune illnesses, such as Wegener’s granulomatosis and cerebral vasculitis. They were all in research protocols and suffered from symptoms that were often psychological that required my attention.

Tony led by example as the combination of scientist and compassionate clinician, with superb didactic skills as well as excellent bedside manner. His patients loved him. His caring skills were extraordinary, his science superb.

In early 1981, we started admitting our first patients with a mysterious infection that destroyed their immune system. This was before it was called AIDS. Tony and his team studied and cared for these young gay men and I watched the transformation of Tony Fauci into the public health leader he became over the next 4 decades.

What I remember most that year was the death of one of his patients, an identical twin who had received a bone marrow transplant from his brother. Tony wept openly when he died and became determined to study this new scourge and cure it. Amazing.

Daniel McQuillen, MD, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston

The things that stand out to me about Tony Fauci are his inspirational leadership to physicians in the field of infectious disease and unequivocally strong voice for science to drive progress in infectious diseases and on behalf of those suffering from them.

His advocacy to increase funds for research has been both admirable and effective and informed by the need to nurture trainees in the field. He has devoted time annually at Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) board meetings to both discuss NIAID programs but also to listen and act on advocacy for improved support for young investigators. He has also participated in annual IDSA Research Fellowship meetings as an inspirational mentor.

My career was still young in 2003 when as a presidential advisor he developed the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), bringing medical advances from the U.S. to resource-poor countries, saving millions of lives and preventing millions of new infections. He has gone out of his way to listen to the voices of patients, bringing those with HIV into discussions of how to design HIV clinical trials and personally caring for Ebola patients at the NIH Clinical Center.

Our interview session [this year] at IDWeek began with his reflections on how our exciting field had changed since he was a trainee, highlighting the opportunities and challenges we still have before us. Together with that, it was a great honor to announce the new Anthony Fauci Award that will be given beginning next year to an IDSA member who exemplifies courage in leadership speaking scientific truth, perseverance in the face of opposition, and serving as a change agent for healthcare and patients around the world.

Robert Schooley, MD, University of California San Diego

My first interaction with Tony was in July of 1976 when I arrived at the NIH as an infectious disease fellow in the NIAID’s Laboratory of Clinical Investigation. Tony had only recently returned from Cornell to establish his own laboratory and was quickly recognized by each of the trainees in my cohort as being a true physician-scientist.

Many of his peers at the time at the NIH were physicians who were mainly functioning as scientists. Tony was one of the few who truly did the “physician thing” in terms of taking on patients who came to the NIH to participate in research studies as his own patients. He rounded on every patient every day and rounded three times a week with an entire team of extremely talented fellows who had been recruited by the preeminent residency programs in the country.

As he led rounds, it was clear that he had retained all of the clinical skills he had acquired during his chief residency at Cornell. His clinical acuity was one of the key factors that made his research questions so relevant to developing the clinically actionable knowledge base that moves medicine forward.

Peter Hotez, MD, PhD, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas

I first met Dr. Fauci when I was an MD/PhD student at Weill Cornell Medical College and Rockefeller University in the 1980s. By then he was already a biomedical superstar in infectious diseases, having graduated from Cornell Med more than 15 years before I ultimately did.

He was always approachable and intensely interested in the science. That was something special about Tony — his passion for the science and learning new things, especially for things outside his area. The fact that I was working to develop a vaccine to prevent parasitic worms was fascinating for him. He made a point to keep in touch with me, and of course I was thrilled to be able to consult with Tony or bounce ideas off of him. This was especially helpful when making big career moves such as when I relocated our laboratory to the Texas Medical Center — Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine — in 2010.

Having his support and enthusiasm meant a lot and helped to give me the courage to make a big step, which turned out to be one of the best career moves I ever made. Later, he was also very helpful when we were developing new coronavirus vaccines for SARS, MERS, and ultimately COVID-19. He was thrilled to learn that now our recombinant protein vaccine technology for COVID has been administered to almost 100 million people.

Leana Wen, MD, MSc, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

Most Americans know Dr. Fauci from his work as the U.S. government’s face of the COVID-19 response. They should also know that he has been in public service for nearly 6 decades and has worked for seven presidents. He was instrumental in one of President George W. Bush’s signature achievements, establishing PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, that has saved countless lives globally.

Beyond his work directing NIAID and shepherding the U.S.’s response to HIV, Ebola, and other infectious disease threats, Dr. Fauci has been an exemplary physician-scientist. Throughout all these years, even to present day, he has treated patients and directly translated laboratory research into clinical practice. I’ve met numerous clinicians who trained with Dr. Fauci and who revere him not only for his scientific excellence and administrative and communication skills but also his clinical acumen and, crucially, his compassion, attentiveness, and kindness to patients and families.

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