Dr. Anthony S. Fauci is a hero for our time

As he will be the first to explain

Q: How do you know if there’s a fighter pilot at your party?

A: He’ll tell you.

That old saw hit me as I waded through Dr. Anthony S. Fauci’s 464-page autobiography, “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service.”

Though auto-hagiography is a more accurate description.

For decades, Fauci was one of Washington’s most powerful bureaucrats. In 2011, the New York Times called him the “J. Edgar Hoover of biology.” Covid made him a household name and lightning rod worldwide. Now he has given the public an inside look at his unique career.

In theory, anyway.

In reality, readers looking for serious self-reflection in “On Call” will be disappointed. Fauci’s tome feels like nothing so much as a book-length cover letter from a job candidate who is very pleased with himself.

His triumphs begin early, in the Our Lady of Guadalupe parish grade school, where “I was the top student in the class.” The nuns didn’t want him to leave!

Yes, that’s right: Fauci, who is 83, includes his elementary school grade average in his biography. It was 98.8, if you must know.

(For more tales of Tony’s incredible narcissism, subscribe - or wait a week. Hey, I had to read it, I spared you the pain! That’s gotta be worth 20 cents a day…)

As in elementary school, so at Cornell Medical School, where Tony assures us that “I graduated number one in my class… [and] had my pick of post-medical-school training.” (Tony claims Cornell was his first pick for medical school, a claim hard to square with his credentialism, easier to square with his narcissism.)

But wait! There’s more.

Residency was just another breeze for the good doctor:

I was most challenged and comfortable diagnosing and treating the sickest patients… it was obvious to my mentors that I had what they referred to as “instinctively good clinical judgment”… I had a natural capacity to remain calm and in control even under the most stressful life-and-death circumstances…

I honed my clinical skills to the point that I felt there was no medical problem that I could not handle and handle as well as anyone.

Tony then found his way back to the National Institutes of Health, where his triumphs continued:

My upward career trajectory was steep… [I was] being offered endowed chairs in Department of Medicine in prestigious medical centers across the country…

At age 43 I was probably the youngest person ever appointed to head an NIH institute. I told [the NIH head] I was confident about my abilities to handle the job.

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(I wish I was a little bit taller…)

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Getting the picture?

Fauci’s mammoth self-love means he cannot reconsider any choice that he’s made, at least not publicly. He fails to grapple seriously with criticism, including what has become the most serious stain on his career — the question of whether risky “gain-of-function” research he encouraged and funded led to the Covid epidemic.

Recall that in a 2012 paper, Fauci defended conducting risky experiments to make viruses more dangerous even if a laboratory accident “leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic.” Why? “The benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks,” Fauci wrote.

In the aftermath of the Covid epidemic — which almost certainly occurred because of just the kind of research that Fauci defended 12 years ago — does Fauci still hold that view? He doesn’t say.

Instead he spends most of his time parsing the definition of “gain-of-function research” to defend himself. He is, at best, missing the forest for the trees.

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Fauci comes across most sympathetically in “On Call” when he discusses the HIV/AIDS epidemic and his efforts to oversee the federal government’s research fighting it. The book makes clear that the suffering he saw in AIDS patients, as well as the death of his deputy Dr. James Hill during a medical procedure that had to be performed because of Hill had HIV and hepatitis, deeply bothered him.

It is hard - if not impossible - to square his pain with the caricature of him that Robert F. Kennedy offers in “The Real Anthony Fauci” as someone who “sabotage[d] safe and effective off-patent therapeutic treatments for AIDS.”

In this case, I am inclined to believe Fauci, in part because so many AIDS activists - including Larry Kramer, the most prominent of all before his 2020 death — supported Fauci.

Fauci’s relationship with Donald Trump also comes as something of a surprise, at least as Fauci portrays it. The two men spoke frequently early for much of 2020, and Fauci felt that Trump supported him more than many of his appointees. Fauci didn’t particularly respect Trump, but he appreciated his political acumen and bluster.

Aside from those bits, though, the book is hard to take. Imagine a loooong “conversation” with your most self-satisfied friend. Great job, Tony! I’m so happy for you, Tony! Did the President really say that, Tony! The Medal of Freedom, that’s so awesome!

One day - hopefully soon, but unfortunately maybe not for decades, until the archives open - we will get a biography of Fauci that offers a full and balanced picture of the good and not-so-good sides of his career and personality.

“On Call” is not that book. Even less than a typical autobiography, it is designed to burnish, not reflect. It will satisfy only those who already love Fauci - and be quickly forgotten.