Anthony Stephen Fauci (born December 24, 1940) is an American physician-scientist and immunologist who served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022 and as Chief Medical Advisor to the President from 2021 to 2022. He was one of the world's most frequently cited scientists across all scientific journals from 1983 to 2002.
Fauci graduated from the College of the Holy Cross, where he studied classics, and earned his Doctor of Medicine from Cornell University. As a physician at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Fauci served in the American public health sector for more than fifty years and has acted as an advisor to every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan. During his time as NIAID director, he was known for his contributions to HIV/AIDS research and other immunodeficiency diseases. He 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.
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. 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.
Early life and education 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, which had previously been in the Bensonhurst neighborhood. In his youth, Fauci developed a fascination with World War II. 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 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 at Holy Cross, his courses focused on philosophy, French, Greek, and Latin. He graduated from Holy Cross in 1962 with a Bachelor of Arts, cum laude, 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 (M.D.) from the Cornell Medical College in 1966. At Cornell, he focused on adult internal medicine, mainly infectious diseases and the immune system. Fauci then did an internship and residency in internal medicine at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center (now Weill Cornell Medical Center).
Career After completing his medical residency in 1968, Fauci joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a clinical associate in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases's (NIAID) Laboratory of Clinical Investigation (LCI). 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.
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. Fauci has been a visiting professor at many medical centers and has received numerous honorary doctorates from universities in the U.S. and abroad.
Medical achievements
Fauci 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.Holy Cross Magazine Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., '62 Retrieved on May 30, 2007. 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.
Fauci 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. Fauci has worked to develop strategies for the therapy and immune reconstitution of patients with the disease, as well as for a vaccine to prevent HIV infection. His current research is concentrated on identifying the nature of the immunopathogenic mechanisms of HIV infection and the scope of the body's immune responses to HIV. 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." 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.
HIV/AIDS epidemic
In a 2020 interview with The Guardian, Fauci remarked, "My career and my identity has really been defined by HIV." He was one of the leading researchers during the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s. In 1981, he and his team of researchers began looking for a vaccine or treatment for this novel virus, though they met a number of obstacles. In October 1988, protesters came to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Fauci, who had become the institute's director in 1984, bore the brunt of the anger from the LGBTQ+ community who were largely ignored by the government.
Leading AIDS activist Larry Kramer attacked Fauci relentlessly in the media. He called him an "incompetent idiot" and a "pill-pushing" tool of the medical establishment. Fauci did not have control over drug approval though many people felt he was not doing enough. Fauci did make an effort in the late 1980s to reach out to the LGBTQ+ community in New York and San Francisco to find ways he and the NIAID could find a solution. Fauci was also praised for engaging with AIDS advocates, and he helped to make experimental AIDS treatments more accessible. Though Fauci was initially admonished for his treatment of the AIDS epidemic, his work in the community was eventually acknowledged. Kramer, who had spent years hating Fauci for his treatment of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, eventually called him "the only true and great hero" among government officials during the AIDS crisis.
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:Fauci was the main architect of President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), an HIV/AIDS program responsible for saving over 20 million lives in the developing world.
2009 swine flu pandemic 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, more than the amount of Americans usually infected by the seasonal flu.
Ebola congressional hearing
On October 16, 2014, in a United States congressional hearing regarding the Ebola virus crisis, Fauci, who, as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) had been discussing the importance of screening for weeks, testified that NIAID was still some distance away from producing sufficient quantities of cures or vaccines for widespread trials. Specifically, Fauci said, "While NIAID is an active participant in the global effort to address the public health emergency occurring in west Africa, it is important to recognize that we are still in the early stages of understanding how infection with the Ebola virus can be treated and prevented." Fauci also remarked in the hearing: "As we continue to expedite research while enforcing high safety and efficacy standards, the implementation of the public health measures already known to contain prior Ebola virus outbreaks and the implementation of treatment strategies such as fluid and electrolyte replacement is essential to preventing additional infections, treating those already infected, protecting healthcare providers, and ultimately bringing this epidemic to an end."
COVID-19 pandemic
According to The Washington Post, before the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci was "mostly unknown outside the medical community". Fauci did not meet with Trump until three years after he was inaugurated as president. Fauci was a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force established in late January 2020, under President Donald Trump, to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. He was described as the administration's public health spokesperson during the pandemic, and a strong advocate for ongoing social distancing efforts in the United States. In interviews on January 21, January 26, and February 17, Fauci commented on COVID-19. He said that at the time of the interviews ("right now"), COVID-19 was not a "major threat" to the American public, with the risk to the American public being "low", but that it was "an evolving situation", and that "public health officials need to take [COVID-19] very seriously". In the latter interview, Fauci said that COVID-19 could become a "global pandemic which would then have significant implications for" the United States. In March 2020, he predicted that the infection fatality rate would likely be close to 1%, which was ten times more severe than the 0.1% reported rate for seasonal flu.