Anthony Fauci

Born Name: Anthony Stephen Fauci
Date of Birth: December 24, 1940
Place of Birth: New York City, United States
Spouse(s): Christine Grady (m. 1985)
Children: Megan Fauci, Jennifer Fauci, Alison Fauci
Education: College of the Holy Cross (BA)
Cornell University (MD), Regis High School
Awards: Maxwell Finland Award (1989)
Ernst Jung Prize (1995)
Lasker Award (2007)
Medal of Freedom (2008)
Robert Koch Prize (Gold, 2013)
Scientific career
Fields: Immunology
Institutions: National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Anthony Stephen Fauci (born December 24, 1940) is an American physician and immunologist who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984. Since January 2020, he has been one of the lead members of the Trump Administration's White House Coronavirus Task Force addressing the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in the United States. Fauci is widely seen to be one of the most trusted medical figures in the country.

Fauci is widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts on infectious diseases. As a physician with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Fauci has served American public health in various capacities for over 50 years, and has been an advisor to every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan. He has made contributions to HIV/AIDS research and other immunodeficiencies, both as a scientist and as the head of the NIAID at the NIH.

Early life and education
Fauci was born in Brooklyn, New York City, to Stephen A. Fauci and Eugenia Abys Fauci, owners of a pharmacy. His father was a Columbia University-trained pharmacist, his mother and sister Denise worked the register, and Fauci delivered prescriptions. The pharmacy was located in the Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn, one neighborhood away from his family home in Bensonhurst.

Fauci's paternal grandparents, Antonino Fauci and Calogera Guardino, were from Sciacca, Italy. His maternal grandmother, Raffaella Trematerra, from Naples, Italy, was a seamstress. His maternal grandfather, Giovanni Abys, was born in Switzerland and was an artist, noted for landscape and portrait painting, magazine illustrations (Italy) as well as graphic design for commercial labels, including olive oil cans. His grandparents emigrated from Italy to the United States in the late 19th century. Fauci grew up Catholic.

Fauci attended Regis High School in Manhattan's Upper East Side, where he captained the school's basketball team and graduated in 1958. He then went to the College of the Holy Cross, graduating in 1962 with a Bachelor of Arts in classics. Fauci then attended medical school at Cornell University Medical College where he graduated first in his class with a Doctor of Medicine in 1966. He then completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, now known as New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine.

Career
In 1968, Fauci joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a clinical associate in the Laboratory of Clinical Investigation (LCI) at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In 1974, he became Head of the Clinical Physiology Section, LCI, and in 1980 was appointed Chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. In 1984, he became director of NIAID, a position he still holds as of 2020. In that role he has the responsibility for an extensive research portfolio of basic and applied research on infectious and immune-mediated illnesses. He has turned down several offers to lead his agency's parent, the NIH, and has been at the forefront of U.S. efforts to contend with viral diseases like HIV, SARS, the 2009 swine flu pandemic, MERS, Ebola and COVID-19.

He played a significant role in the early 2000s in creating the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief 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 30 honorary doctorates from universities in the U.S. and abroad.

Medical achievements
Fauci has made important scientific observations that contributed to the understanding of 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 of the American Rheumatism Association, membership 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.

Fauci has contributed to the understanding of how HIV destroys the body's defenses leading to the progression 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 million authors in all disciplines throughout the world who published articles in scientific journals".

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 are essential to preventing additional infections, treating those already infected, protecting healthcare providers, and ultimately bringing this epidemic to an end."

COVID-19 task force
Fauci is a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force established in late January 2020, under President Trump, to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. He said that the final case fatality rate of those who are infected will likely be closer to 1% than the 2% initially estimated by the World Health Organization, which is ten times the 0.1% reported rate for seasonal flu.

Fauci has been a "de facto" public health spokesperson for the office of the President during the pandemic and strong advocate of ongoing social distancing efforts in the United States. On March 29 he argued for the extension of the initial 15-day self-isolation guidelines, issued by the executive office, to at least until the end of April 2020. Due to his disagreements with Trump, Fauci has been criticised by right-wing pundits and received death threats that resulted in the need for a security detail. While there have been disagreements, Trump has also praised Fauci.

Personal life
Fauci married Christine Grady, a nurse and bioethicist with the NIH, in 1985, after they met while treating a patient. Grady is chief of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. The couple has three adult daughters: Jennifer, Megan, and Alison.

Memberships
Fauci is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Philosophical Society, and the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, as well as other numerous professional societies including the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the American Association of Immunologists. He serves on the editorial boards of many scientific journals; as an editor of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine; and as author, coauthor, or editor of more than 1,000 scientific publications, including several textbooks.