On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service
Anthony Fauci, M.D. (Viking, $48, 464 pages)
The autobiography of Anthony Fauci, the public face of both the Trump and Biden White House responses to COVID, provides plenty of fodder for both fans and critics of Fauci’s handling of the pandemic. The books’ errors of fact and evasion of controversies might be forgivable but the vanity is not. There is no shortage of self-serving commentary on his own career, as when he says he became “hero to the millions of Americans who saw me as a physician bravely standing up for science, truth, and rational decision-making.” Although Fauci told Congress “I don’t recall” more than 100 times during hearings on COVID, he has no trouble remembering every bit of praise that others have heaped upon him, from colleagues, employees, and even celebrities. Fauci began his government career in 1968 when he joined the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and rose through its ranks, eventually heading the agency. In the 1980s, Fauci bolloxed the agency’s response to AIDS and HIV, from falsely claiming that the newly discovered disease could be spread by “routine close contact” to wrongly predicting a heterosexual breakout of the disease to hyper-focusing on developing an anti-HIV vaccine that took resources from other amelioration strategies to highlighting a NIAID scientist’s fraudulent claim to have discovered the virus. On Call does not mention the first three incidents and doesn’t admit Fauci’s error in backing the fraudulent claim. Fauci discusses his role in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations dealing with bioterrorism threats and predicted doomsday pandemics such as bird flu and swine flu that never quite materialized. “One might imagine that it would be terribly frustrating to put in enormous efforts of preparation for events that never happen,” Fauci writes. “However, that is not how I feel.” Fauci does not easily admit error and does not express regret for his disastrous COVID guidance supporting lockdowns that have since shown to have little benefit in preventing the spread of the virus nor does he show the science upon which he based his advice. Yet, the book does shine a light on why Fauci ultimately made the decisions he did: he is keenly aware of his public profile and his belief that activism and fear-mongering ensures both publicity and funding for his brand of politicized but ineffectual science.
