AMHS Member on Former Colleague Dr. Anthony Fauci

Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., NIH photo 2020

With the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, the whole world has come to know Dr. Anthony Fauci. “Tony” has become the “rock star” among medical experts, known for his no-nonsense style of telling us what is known and what is not known. He has been ubiquitous at White House press briefings and on cable news TV interviews, and the American public has come to rely on him for the truth in a difficult and unnerving situation.

“Dr. Fauci’s brilliance, talent and work ethic were recognized early on, his communication skills were honed during the decades he testified at congressional appropriations hearings on Capitol Hill, where he remains respected for his ability to break down complex medical subjects into layman’s terms.”

One of our AMHS members is not at all surprised. William Sansalone, a Ph.D. biochemist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) during the 1970s and 1980s, worked in the same building as Dr. Fauci but for a different institute. He remembers when Dr. Fauci arrived at NIH and quickly made his mark. By 1984, he had become Director of the National institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the largest of the 27 components that make up NIH. Dr. Fauci’s grandparents were immigrants from Naples and Sicily. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., he was educated by Jesuits in New York City and at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass. He then graduated at the top of his class at Cornell Medical School in Manhattan and decided to make the study of infectious diseases his life’s work.

The recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Dr. Fauci has been awarded 45 honorary degrees from academic institutions in the United States and abroad. Bill recalls that some years ago, Dr. Fauci was offered the job of Director of NIH but turned it down, partly because it was a political appointment but, mostly, because he thought he could do more good at NIAID. There, he oversees research to prevent, diagnose and treat many infectious diseases, including emerging diseases such as SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome), and covid-19. The latter is caused by SARS-CoV-2, one of seven known coronaviruses that can infect people. Bill notes that many writers use the terms “covid-19” and “coronavirus” interchangeably, but that is incorrect. SARSCov-2 causes covid-19, just as HIV causes AIDS.

And Bill says while Dr. Fauci’s brilliance, talent and work ethic were recognized early on, his communication skills were honed during the decades he testified at congressional appropriations hearings on Capitol Hill, where he remains respected for his ability to break down complex medical subjects into layman’s terms — a skill which is now serving him well. He became very effective in explaining to Congress how his institute had spent the previous year’s funds and what he and his team needed money for in the coming year. Bill noted that, following the attacks on September 11, 2001, there was a big emphasis on infectious diseases as a national security threat. NIAID’s funding increased sharply under Dr. Fauci, who inspired confidence and trust that the taxpayers’ money would be spent wisely. He recalls that in the post-9/11 world, NIH changed from being an accessible campus near a Metro stop, to a high-security area with electrified fences.

As Bill explained, the anthrax scare was a wake-up call, given the deadly pathogens stored in highly secured areas on the NIH campus. Bill says Dr. Fauci, the grandson of Italian immigrants, is a New Yorker through and through, although he actually lost some of his Brooklyn accent over the years. It is notable that two grandsons of Italian immigrants have been playing prominent roles in fighting the covid-19 pandemic: Dr. Fauci as the go-to medical expert and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, whose state is now the hardest-hit in the nation. And as Governor Cuomo has said more than once during his press conferences, we are “blessed” to have Dr. Fauci. ❚

(Note: Bill Sansalone contributed to this article. He had a 46-year career in teaching and research at three medical centers in Brooklyn, N.Y., Bethesda, Md., and Washington, D.C. During the middle part of his career (1971- 1996), he was at NIH. For his work mentoring recent Italian medical graduates on the NIH campus, the Italian Government named him Cavaliere della Repubblica. Bill is the son of Italian immigrants from Calabria who, as newlyweds in 1916, began clearing 35 acres of woodland for fruit and vegetable production in southern New Jersey. They raised eight children, of whom Bill was the seventh. Bill was the first participant in the Marconi Project of audio interviews for the Casa Italiana Sociocultural Center’s Immigration Museum).