How Anthony Fauci Became America’s Doctor

“Perhaps not since the late actor Jack Palance did one-armed push-ups at the 1991 Oscars at age 73 has the nation been this seduced by a senior citizen,” writes USA Today’s Marco della Cava.

Millions of American’s have been introduced to Dr. Anthony Fauci through the White House’s briefings on COVID-19. Dr. Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; most recently, he has been front and center as part of the nation’s coronavirus task force.

But, as Cava notes, Anthony Stephen Fauci didn’t grow up wanting to be famous.

“Mostly he just wanted to make a difference.” Still, he adds, Fauci is likely to go down as one of the few scientists to become household names. On top of everything else, at age 79, Dr. Fauci has a bobble-head in his honor and was parodied by Brad Pitt on Saturday Night Live.

Cava describes Dr. Fauci as a man dedicated to hard work, interspersed with power walks with his wife, scientist Christine Grady, and his three accomplished daughters. He loves to invite guests over for his famous pasta Bolognese (“the secret is in the simmering.”)

The article paints a picture of Dr. Fauci’s hard-working background. He grew up in Brooklyn making bicycle deliveries for his parents who ran a pharmacy. He commuted to high school for hours on buses and subways. A lifelong Catholic, Fauci attended the Jesuit college Holy Cross in Massachusetts while working construction jobs in the summer. In addition to science classes, he spent much of his time studying Latin and Greek, romance languages and philosophy. But his academic ways didn’t stop him from being a star athlete. During his school years, it has been said that Fauci regretted his 5-foot-7-inch stature, which prevented him from pursuing dreams of a basketball career.

It was just as well because it seems that serving others through medicine is Dr. Fauci’s true calling.

Cava quotes Eric Goosby, professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco: “Tony was deeply affected by exposure to the Jesuit order, which fostered in him a self-expectation of service. This guy goes to sleep and wakes up asking, ‘Have I done everything I can do?’ It’s in his DNA.”

New Yorker writer Michael Specter has known Dr Fauci for decades, covering his work through six different U.S. presidents and the AIDS epidemic. Specter’s April 10, 2020 New Yorker article is entitled, “How Anthony Fauci Became America’s Doctor.”

In the 1970s, Dr. Fauci worked with his mentor, Sheldon Wolff, to bring together two different medical disciplines to develop a cure for vasculitis, which—up until that point—was usually a death sentence for anyone suffering from the painful condition. “He’s always taken an open-minded approach to the problems that he’s faced,” Specter told Dave Davies on NPR’s Fresh Air program. During the height of the AIDS epidemic, for example, Fauci worked with activists to increase the number of patients eligible for experimental treatments. His actions saved countless lives.

Specter believes that Fauci brought a similar forward-thinking approach to his work on Ebola, and now again with COVID-19. Specter says: “He wants to make a difference.”

Dr. Fauci has been offered the head job to be the director of the National Institutes of Health several times. But he always turns it down. “He turns it down for a couple reasons,” says Specter. “He has a lab and he cares about keeping his lab. He cares about seeing patients, and, even now, still does. But I think more importantly, he’s figured out that you can be more persuasive sometimes without having the top job — you have more room to maneuver.”

In his USA Today article, Cava speculates that perhaps Fauci’s recipe for success can be found his remarks to the 2016 graduating class at Ohio State University: “Fauci laid out five credos to live by: Be a perpetual student, expect the unexpected, embrace public service, lead by example and, finally, pursue happiness...Find your source of joy and embrace it.”

Cava concludes: As prescriptions go, Fauci has taken his own medicine.

This article contains excerpts from Marco della Cava’s May 3 USA Today article and an interview about Dr. Anthony Fauci by Dave Davies on NPR’s Fresh Air program.