The Spire

Ben Lepper ’25

Editor-in-Chief

On March 19th, the Editors-in-Chief of The Spire had the opportunity to participate in a private conversation with Dr. Anthony Fauci ‘62 as a part of this past week’s Fauci-Grady Residency. The conversation was attended by both myself and Nathan, as well as Liam Murphy ‘25 and Juan Cortes ‘27 of The Fenwick Review. Both publications were given the opportunity to prepare questions. Our questions mostly focused on Dr. Fauci’s time at Holy Cross, as well as several questions about the doctor’s illustrious 60-year career.

Our first question for Dr. Fauci surrounded the many different medical and governmental positions that he held throughout his career. We were interested in learning about the most challenging position he had held, and how he persevered through it. He responded by saying that just picking one challenging position was difficult.

“I don’t think there’s one, because I had close to a 40 year career as director [of the National Institute of Agency and Infectious Diseases],” he said. “I’ve held roles that were scientific in public health and roles that were administrative in policy, so two different buckets.” 

He then expressed challenges that he faced in both the public health sphere, as well as in the policy sphere. “In the very early years of HIV,” he said, “it was really quite a unique and unprecedented experience for a physician scientist, in that we were dealing with a brand new disease that didn’t have a name, that didn’t have an ideology. We, as physicians, tried to do what we could for the individual care of the patients at the same time as asking questions to try and get to the solution. So, I would consider that one of the most difficult, but nonetheless gratifying, challenges that I had as a physician scientist; to be dealing with an infectious disease, which is my specialty and which we didn’t know what it was, that was killing almost everybody.

“It really is a profound challenge to do that,” he continued, “particularly when you’re used to in your prior career, which was just a few years earlier, being highly successful in turning around diseases. My team created protocols which could put patients into 93% remission. 
So, we were on a real high; we would hear everybody say, ‘oh, thank you for saving us.’ And then, literally overnight, we’d go to a different area and, no matter what you do with the patients, they’re dying. That was very difficult to describe, because you don’t want to give up — you’re the only hope the patient has. But, on the other hand, day after day, week after week, you see discouraging results, which, on the other side of the coin, actually gives you the energy to do something about it, which took years to do, but we did. 
So, that’s the scientific challenge.”

Dr. Fauci then spoke of one of the biggest challenges he faced in the policy sphere. “I think it was obvious to everybody when I was in the White House during the Trump administration,” he said, “that he’s an unusual man. We know that from what’s going on right now. 
And when I first got into the position and he was doing some unorthodox things, I said, ‘well, that doesn’t impact me, so I’ll just mind my business and keep my mouth shut,’ when he was trashing the press and saying all kinds of things that were really not particularly true.”

“However, when he started to say things that had an impact on public health that were clearly incorrect,” he continued, “that was very challenging. And, I made a decision — and I think it was the right decision — that as much as I have a great deal of respect for the office of the President of the United States, I felt that in order to maintain my own personal integrity and to fulfill my responsibility to the American public. I had to publicly disagree with the -resident of the United States. 
That is not an easy thing to do, and extremists think I did it for political reasons. That was very painful for me, to get up when he said, ‘oh, no, it’s going to disappear like magic,’ and I had to tell the American public, ‘no, it’s not going to disappear like magic. 
You’ve got to stay safe, you’ve got to wear a mask, you’d better do this.’ He wanted the outbreak to taper away at the end of March, the beginning of April — just like the flu. He desperately wished that because the election was coming up. And, when that didn’t happen, he invoked magic elixirs like hydroxychloroquine, saying that was the cure. There was one paper that said it worked, and that paper was completely flawed and has subsequently been withdrawn. So I had to say ‘no, hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work,’ and then there was ivermectin, and I said ‘no ivermectin doesn’t work.’ That was really challenging because, then, the people who were surrounding the President went on a very, very aggressive attempt to discredit me, publicly in the papers and things like that. I would say that was very challenging.”

Our next question was about Dr. Fauci’s Jesuit education, from high school to Holy Cross, and how he felt Jesuit values shaped his professional and personal life. He said that they were “really fundamental to everything that happened, because when you have core values that are instilled in you, you really get solidified. They started off with my parents, who were very much interested in service to other people and what you can do to make the world a better place. I was very fortunate to have parents who felt that way. So, I had those instincts before I went into the Jesuit sphere.”

“When I got into the Jesuit sphere,” he continued, “fortunately, it completely fortified the things that I was taught as a child: service for others, integrity, transparency, teamwork. And if you look at the challenges that I faced, from fundamental clinical challenges, to scientific challenges, to what I was talking about in the White House, the idea of sticking with honesty, integrity, teamwork, and caring about other people absolutely got me through very, very difficult times.

“
The other thing that I learned,” he said, “was something that one of the Jesuits told me at Regis High School, and was again repeated by, I believe, one of my English teachers here many, many years ago. In communication, the important thing is precision of thought and economy of expression. In other words, when you’re communicating, be very precise at what the message is that you’re communicating. And, say it in as few words as possible. 
And that, I think, is as core to the Jesuit way as is service to others.”

Next, we asked him more about his Holy Cross experience, and how his time here and his decision to major in Classics led to his pursuit of a career in public health. “The Classics and humanities courses that I took,” he said, “were really critical in how I approached my profession as a physician — interest in the person, cura personalis, is the way I approach everything. 
So when I see a disease, I see a patient who has a disease. When I have a public health challenge, it’s the people who are afflicted by malaria and tuberculosis, not the parasite. It’s the people. 

“That’s just the way I look at things as everything from a physician to a scientist,” he continued. “That is the kind of thing that we always spoke about when we were going through Greek class and Latin class. I don’t know how many credits of philosophy you guys take now, but I was looking at one of my old report cards from here, and I must have taken about 30 credits of philosophy. Nautical psychology, metaphysics, ethics, and on and on. Back then, when we were doing it, it was kind of an interesting thought exercise, but it really was very, very influential on how I look at things. It was helpful for me to go into medicine with a curiosity in people, not just biology and chemistry.”

Dr. Fauci continued on to speak about some of the professors who helped shape him, and he specifically mentioned Professor Edward F. Callahan. “He was an English teacher who was one of the ones who was very hard on what I was saying about communication, about when you communicate. You’ve got to be very precise, and you’ve gotta not confuse your audience, say it in as few words as possible. 
One of the problems that people have when they communicate, they tend to go into multiple different side roads, and then at the end of the conversation, people say, ‘what the hell is he talking about?’”

We next wanted to see if Dr. Fauci had any pieces of advice for current Holy Cross students interested in following a career in public health. He started out by saying “that isn’t the only noble field to go into, by any means. But, if you happen to have the inclination to pursue that, I can tell you now, from almost 60 years of experience, that it is amazingly gratifying. The amount of good feelings you have about what you can do to contribute to the welfare of the world and to make the world a better place is beyond description important.”

“Now, on the other hand, we’re involved in a cataclysmic period. We’re involved in a period where the government comes in and says, ‘USAID has saved so many lives, and we’re getting rid of it.’ I was just doing my emails this morning when I got up and saw that they’re going to eliminate the HIV prevention program in the United States from the CDC, which prevents thousands of cases by education, by distribution of information that would help people avoid infection, and condom distribution. They’re going to eliminate that. So, if I were someone getting ready to go into medicine and science, I might say, ‘what the hell do I want to do that for?’

“My advice to young people is that, when there is an assault on science and an assault on public health, don’t get discouraged. That’s not going to last. It is a non-sustainable trend. 
It can’t last because it’s inherently wrong and it’s going to explode on its own wrongness, but it’s going to be painful for the next however long it goes on. So my advice to somebody interested is that if you are living through a very difficult time, don’t walk away from your passion because you’re afraid of what the response out there is.”

Lastly, we wanted to know what Dr. Fauci wanted the legacy he left behind to be. “I’ve been asked that question and I’ll give you the answer I always give,” he said. “
My legacy is going to not be determined by what I say my legacy is going to be. My legacy is going to be people’s evaluation of what I’ve accomplished. I believe I’ve had major accomplishments, but other people would judge it, because that’s what a legacy is. 
When you’re up in heaven looking down what’s going on, you’re not determining it. Other people are.

“But the way I look at it, the one thing I would want people to to appreciate is that I gave it my all, all the time in my profession. As they say, I left it all out on the court. I didn’t hold anything back. If you think my development of the PEPFAR program or my development of the AIDS program that developed the drugs is great, fine. You’ll make that my legacy. But the only thing I care about is that you know that I actually left it all out on the court.”

We’d like to take this time to thank Dr. Fauci for his time this week, and thank everybody in Holy Cross’ Marketing and Communications office who made this conversation possible. 

Featured image courtesy of Holy Cross Magazine