Column by Dr. Richard Sternberg

Fauci Recollected
as Humble, Inclusive

Dr. Anthony Fauci retires from federal service this month, leaving the National Institute of Health where he has worked for 54 years, the last 38 as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

He has been an advisor to seven presidents. Until the COVID crisis, he was known primarily for his work on HIV/AIDS. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008 by president George W. Bush, with whom he worked very closely on a global program to combat HIV/AIDS, known as PREPFAR, and The United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has saved an estimated 21 million lives (and for which, in my opinion, both should receive the Nobel Peace Prize). The senior President Bush called Dr. Fauci a hero during a 1988 presidential debate.

In 1987, I had just opened my first solo practice office in Loudoun County, Virginia. The county seat is Leesburg which, back then, was considered a far distant suburb or even exurb of Washington DC. Leesburg Memorial Hospital, which had approximately 100 beds, served the community. It was a general hospital with some, but not all, specialty services available.

The medical staff was not large enough for us to be divided into separate departments. It met in toto weekly for business meetings and Grand Rounds sessions where cases were discussed or interesting lectures were given, some occasionally by visiting physicians or scientists.

HIV/AIDS was then probably the hottest topic in medicine. Somehow, one of the internal medicine physicians—and I suspect it was the one who had formerly been a boomer captain in the U.S. Navy (try to wrap your head around that concept)—had managed to get Dr. Fauci to drive all the way out to Leesburg to give Grand Rounds to a mixed group of community physicians. I remember that the one infectious disease physician who occasionally came to the hospital was not present that day. At that point, Dr. Fauci had been director of NIAID for about four years and the nation’s lead investigator on HIV/AIDS since it’s recognition about 10 years earlier.

I remember that the lecture was remarkable for speaking to all the physicians in the room, not just the internists. As an orthopaedic surgeon, I had previously treated AIDS patients, who in retrospect had not been diagnosed at the time of their treatment. My first patient with AIDS, that I later found out about, was an 86-year-old woman with a fractured hip, who had previously had multiple blood transfusions for other issues. Dr. Fauci’s talk was of very much interest to me since not rarely, orthopaedic surgeons come into contact with a patient’s body fluid.

I don’t remember any of the specifics of the lecture, but after the talk, I and a few of the other physicians spoke with him. I remember a fairly humble man, who said he was happy to have been asked to talk to us. I asked him how he decided on going into infectious disease research and he told me an interesting story. After finishing his residency, he had to decide which subspecialty he would go into. He said he considered oncology and infectious disease. He decided on infectious disease because he thought with proper management most patients could be cured, while most oncology patients died. Remember—this was 1965 when he had to make this decision. He then said, and I paraphrase, that ironically things had reversed and he was dealing with an infectious disease that was 100 percent fatal while many cancers were able to be cured or at least put into remission. He had a wry smile as he said that.

If it wasn’t for vicious partisan politics, Dr. Anthony Fauci would be considered one of the great men of our age, like Jonas Salk, for his work and leadership on AIDS, COVID, SARS, Zika and other infectious diseases. I certainly consider him so.

Dr. Richard Sternberg is a retired Bassett Hospital orthopedic surgeon.