[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 195 (Wednesday, December 19, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15994-S15995]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO ANTHONY FAUCI
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, today I would like to take a moment to
recognize Dr. Anthony Facui, Director of the National Institutes of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIAID, for his numerous contributions
in medical research and specifically his work on HIV/AIDS, avian flu
and anthrax. Even in a city such as Washington, which is filled with
driven and motivated people, Dr. Fauci is a cut above. As Director of
NIAID, he has worked tirelessly to lead the fight against AIDS and has
been instrumental in shaping our understanding of how this disease
works. I am proud to have worked with Dr. Fauci and would like to take
this opportunity to submit the following article recounting the
remarkable work and career of Dr. Fauci for the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, Sept. 28, 2007]
The Honored Doctor
(By Sue Anne Pressley Montes)
Routinely, his gray Toyota hybrid is parked from 6:30 a.m.
until late at night outside Building 31 at the National
Institutes of Health in Bethesda. Sometimes his colleagues
leave notes on the windshield that say things like, ``Go
home. You're making me feel guilty.''
But Anthony S. Fauci has made a career of long hours,
exhaustive research and helping the public understand the
health dangers stalking the planet. As director for 23 years
of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
at NIH, his milieu is the stuff that scares the daylights out
of most people: bioterrorism, deadly flu epidemics, the
enduring specter of AIDS.
Fauci, who is equally at home in the laboratory, at a
patient's bedside, at a congressional hearing or on a Sunday
morning talk show, scarcely has time to collect all the
accolades that come his way. But this has been an
extraordinary year. In the spring, he won the Kober Medal,
one of the highest honors bestowed by the Association of
American Physicians. In July, President Bush awarded him the
National Medal of Science. And today, he receives one of
medicine's most prestigious prizes, the $150,000 Mary Woodard
Lasker public service award, as ``a world-class
investigator'' who ``has spoken eloquently on behalf of
medical science,'' according to the Lasker Foundation.
No one deserves the honors more, his associates agree.
``Dr. Fauci is the best of his kind,'' said former U.S.
surgeon general C. Everett Koop, 90, who has often sought
Fauci's medical advice and counts himself as a friend.
For someone else, this might be heady stuff. But Tony
Fauci, 66, has never strayed far from his down-to-earth
Brooklyn roots or his Jesuit training, with its emphasis on
service and intellectual growth. Beginning his career in the
lab--viewed by many as a backwater of medicine--he soon
became the chief detective probing a mystery that would
encircle the world. Before AIDS even had a name, he made the
``fateful decision,'' he said, to make it the focus of his
research.
``It was a matter of destiny, I think, but by circumstance
alone I had been trained in the very disciplines that
encompassed this brand-new bizarre disease,'' he said. ``This
was in my mind something that was going to be historic.''
He and his researchers would make breakthroughs in
understanding how HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus,
destroys the body's immune system. Years ago, he assumed a
public role, calmly explaining the latest health scares on
talk shows such as ``Face the Nation.'' Through four
presidential administrations, he has led efforts that
resulted in Congress dramatically increasing funding to fight
AIDS.
Today, as Fauci helps direct the president's emergency plan
for AIDS relief in Africa and elsewhere, he also is leading
the fight against such infectious diseases as anthrax and
tuberculosis. In his $250,000-a-year position, he oversees
1,700 employees and a $4.4 billion annual budget.
``Fauci doesn't sleep,'' said Gregory K. Folkers, his chief
of staff. ``He's the hardest-working person you'll ever
encounter.''
The doctor's curriculum vitae supports that assertion. The
bibliography alone is 86 pages, listing 1,118 articles and
papers he has written or contributed to. (An example: ``The
Role of Monocyte/Macrophages and Cytokines in the
Pathogenesis of HIV Infection,'' published in
``Pathobiology'' in 1992.) He has given more than 2,000
speeches, rehearsing with a stopwatch to whittle down his
remarks. He has received 31 honorary doctoral degrees.
Vacations are seldom on the agenda. Often, his wife and
three daughters accompany him to events. This summer, it was
the International AIDS conference in Sydney. But he is seldom
found sitting by the pool behind his Northwest Washington
home. And retirement, he said firmly, is ``not on the radar
screen.''
Exceptional Child
He learned to question early.
It didn't make sense to him when the nuns at his school
said that you had to go to church to get into heaven. His
beloved paternal grandfather, an immigrant from Sicily, spent
his Sunday mornings cooking. What about him?
``I remember going up to him one day. `Grandpa, why don't
you go to Mass?' And he said: `Don't worry about it. For me,
doing good is my Mass,' '' Fauci said.
The experience made him determined to do good through his
work. He was 7.
The Faucis lived in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn,
above the family drugstore operated by his father, Stephen, a
pharmacist.
Fauci's only sibling, Denise Scorce, recalls that he was a
well-rounded kid who liked to play ball but only after he did
his homework.
``He was very normal in every way, but you kind of knew he
was special,'' said Scorce, 69, a retired teacher who lives
in Northern Virginia. ``Everything he did was perfect.''
Fauci won a full scholarship to Regis High School, a Jesuit
institution in Manhattan. Later, he enrolled in another
Jesuit school, the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester,
Mass.
``The Jesuit training is wonderful. I don't think you can
do any better than that,'' he said. ``I always quote,
`Precision of thought, economy of expression.' ''
Although he had an aptitude for science, he received his
1962 bachelor's degree in Greek/pre-med. He took the minimum
number of science courses required for acceptance at Cornell
University Medical College.
``I was very, very heavily influenced by the classics and
philosophy, which I think had an important part in my
ultimate interest in global issues and public service,'' he
said. ``I was interested in broader issues.'' I always tried
to look at things at 40,000 feet as well as down in the
trenches.''
Encounter With ACT UP
One of the most dramatic episodes during Fauci's tenure at
NIH occurred in 1989, when angry ACT UP demonstrators swarmed
his building, demanding to be heard.
Fauci, like many top government officials, was accused of
not doing enough to fight AIDS. The tactics were attention-
getting: smoke bombs, staged ``die-ins,'' chalk bodies drawn
on sidewalks.
``He was public enemy number one for a number of years,''
said writer and activist Larry Kramer, who led the charge.
``I called him that in print. I called him very strong,
hateful things. . . . But Tony was smart enough to sit down
and talk with us.''
Fauci read the leaflets the group distributed and others
threw away. ``If you put it in the context of they were human
beings who were afraid of dying and afraid of getting
infected and forget the theater, they really did have a
point,'' he said.
When police officers moved to arrest the protesters, Fauci
stopped them. He invited a small group to his office to talk.
``He opened the door for us and let us in, and I called him
a hero for that,'' Kramer said in a telephone interview. ``He
let my people become members of his committees and boards,
and he welcomed us at the table. You have to understand that
he got a lot of flak for that.''
It was worth it, Fauci said. ``That was, I think, one of
the better things that I've done.''
Doctor as Family Man
Christine Grady still laughs when she recalls her first
meeting in 1983 with the famous Dr. Fauci. An AIDS nurse who
had recently joined the NIH after working in Brazil, she was
summoned to interpret for a Brazilian patient who wanted to
go home.
Grady was dismayed when the patient responded to Fauci's
detailed instructions on aftercare by saying in Portuguese
that he intended instead to go out and have a good time. She
knew Fauci tolerated no nonsense.
``He said he'll do exactly as you say'' is how she
translated the patient's remarks.
She thought she had been found out a couple of days later
when he asked her to come by his office. Instead of firing
her, as she feared, he asked her out to dinner. They were
married in May 1985.
The Faucis live in a renovated 1920s home in the Wesley
Heights neighborhood. Grady, 55, has a doctorate in
philosophy and ethics from Georgetown, and she heads the
section on human subjects research at the NIH's Department of
Clinical Bioethics. Their children are also busy. Jenny, 21,
is a senior at Harvard University; Megan, 18, who will attend
Columbia University next fall, does community service
teaching in Chicago; Allison, 15, is on the cross-country
team at National Cathedral School.
``He's a goofball,'' said Jenny Fauci of her father. ``He
works hard and he does his thing, but he comes home and he's
singing opera in the kitchen and dancing around.''
She thinks she understands what motivates him. ``Work is
not really work for him,'' she said. ``It's what he believes
in.''
And so Fauci will leave for the office before dawn and
return home long after sunset. It reminds him of that speech
he gave this summer at the AIDS conference in Sydney. ``It
was called `Much Accomplished, Much Left to Do,' '' he said.
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