{"id":69519,"date":"2021-01-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-13T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/a-short-history-of-how-anthony-fauci-has-kept-failing-up-since-1984\/"},"modified":"2021-01-13T09:42:18","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T14:42:18","slug":"a-short-history-of-how-anthony-fauci-has-kept-failing-up-since-1984","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/a-short-history-of-how-anthony-fauci-has-kept-failing-up-since-1984\/","title":{"rendered":"A Short History Of How Anthony Fauci Has Kept Failing Up Since 1984"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fa-short-history-of-how-anthony-fauci-has-kept-failing-up-since-1984%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=69519&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>In 2003, terrorism was a more immediate national danger than infectious diseases. Dr. Anthony Fauci\u2019s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) had just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/426598a\">redirected<\/a> $117 million from infectious diseases to fund a new anthrax vaccine effort in response to the anthrax attacks that happened a week after 9\/11.<\/p>\n<p>The millions were just a small part of the $1.8 billion Fauci had poured into defense from bioterrorist attacks over the preceding two years. More than half of those funds were devoted to anthrax and smallpox alone. In 2004, Fauci <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nti.org\/gsn\/article\/progress-made-on-new-biological-defenses-fauci-says\/\">launched<\/a> the $5.6 billion \u201cProject Bioshield,\u201d the National Institutes of Health\u2019s biggest outlay for a single research issue until then.<\/p>\n<p>Some microbiology researchers at the time, however, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/426598a\">according<\/a> to the journal Nature, were concerned that Fauci\u2019s actions would ultimately \u201cdistort priorities in infectious-disease research, sucking money away from work to understand and counter natural disease outbreaks that ultimately pose a greater threat to public health.\u201d The 2003 Nature article cited a Stanford University microbiologist saying \u201cthat diseases such as influenza and other respiratory-tract infections routinely kill far more people than would die in a bioterrorist attack, and therefore deserve a greater share of the NIAID budget.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The criticism turned out to be warranted. In 2007, after spending billions under the opposite premise, Fauci <a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/archives\/la-xpm-2007-dec-02-na-anthrax2-story.html\">admitted<\/a> that \u201cat the end of the day, you\u2019re not going to kill as many people [with an anthrax attack] as you would if you blasted off a couple of car bombs in Times Square.\u201d His anthrax vaccine effort had failed, having been \u201csunk by lobbying.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The anthrax vaccine failure followed on the heels of Fauci\u2019s controversial leadership of the nation\u2019s AIDS response in the 1980s and \u201890s. According to \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/goodintentionsho00nuss\/page\/n1\/mode\/2up\">Good Intentions<\/a>,\u201d a 1990 book by investigative author and innovation expert Bruce Nussbaum, Fauci started his career as \u201ca lackluster scientist,\u201d who \u201cfound his true vocation\u2014empire building\u201d when he took the reins at NIAID in 1984.<\/p>\n<p>To ensure that AIDS would be his exclusive demesne within the federal government, Fauci \u201cstarted the most important bureaucratic battle in the history of the fight against AIDS,\u201d squeezing out more scientifically competent, but less conniving administrators. According to Nussbaum, if Fauci had not won the battle, \u201cmany people who died might have lived.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Having won his monopoly over AIDS within the federal government, Fauci, by training an immunologist who focuses on how the body fights infections itself, favored a vaccine approach in the fight against the then-terminal illness. This understandable professional bias came at the expense of research into the anti-retroviral drugs that ultimately reduced AIDS from a death sentence to a chronic disease in remission. As Nussbaum wrote in 1990:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Tony Fauci\u2019s managerial incompetence had exacted a staggering cost. By 1987, more than a million Americans were infected by the AlDS virus. Not a single drug treatment had come out of the government\u2019s enormous biomedical research system. In the end, Fauci barely survived by handing over control of the government\u2019s only AIDS drug trial program [to a pharmaceutical company].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As a result, a single drug, AZT, was the only AIDS treatment that came out of Fauci\u2019s government research system, and only after help from the private sector. In 1988, the playwright and prominent AIDS activist Larry Kramer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.villagevoice.com\/2020\/05\/28\/an-open-letter-to-dr-anthony-fauci\/\">published<\/a> an \u201cOpen Letter to Dr. Anthony Fauci\u201d in the Village Voice, writing, in part:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>You admitted that you are an incompetent idiot. Over the past four years, $374 million has been allocated for AIDS treatment research. You were in charge of spending much of that money. . . . Yet after three years you have established only a system of waste, chaos, and uselessness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>According to \u201cGood Intentions,\u201d in \u201can attempt to salvage his reputation, if not his career,\u201d Fauci coopted Kramer, becoming the well-connected activist\u2019s top ally within the federal government\u2019s public health apparatus. Kramer, in turn, was Fauci\u2019s \u201cvector\u201d into elitist American society, perfectly positioning the technocrat for his favorite role as \u201ca hit-the-front-page-every-day kind of guy,\u201d according to an unnamed health official Nussbaum quotes.<\/p>\n<p>With the AIDS treatment research strategy continuing to face setbacks, Fauci focused on developing an HIV vaccine. This quest, however, offered less and less glory as the 1990s progressed. Starting in 1995, private industry began developing effective drug therapies that would drastically reduce AIDS mortality in the developed world by the turn of the millennium, making the HIV vaccine much less of a potential game changer. While the bioterrorism threat restored Fauci\u2019s prominence in national politics, neither the bioterrorism threat nor the anthrax vaccine ever materialized.<\/p>\n<p>Things got even worse for Fauci before they became better. On Feb. 3, 2020, the journal Science <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/news\/2020\/02\/another-hiv-vaccine-strategy-fails-large-scale-study\">reported<\/a> that, after almost four decades, Fauci\u2019s \u201cfailure-ridden search for a vaccine that can stop the AIDS virus has delivered yet another frustrating defeat.\u201d According to the scientist heading the study in South Africa, \u201c[t]here\u2019s absolutely no evidence of efficacy\u201d from the $104 million study. \u201cYears of work went into this. It\u2019s a huge disappointment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fauci admitted to Science that all those years and millions were spent on an effort that he knew was very unlikely to succeed: \u201cWe were struggling for years and years, and so we grabbed onto the slightest positive effect, a potential correlate of immunity, and it looked interesting.\u201d Fauci, however, had had just become <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/daily-comment\/trumps-firing-of-a-top-infectious-disease-expert-endangers-us-all\">unfireable<\/a>, with the first U.S. COVID-19 patient diagnosed only a week prior.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was always saying [a respiratory illness like COVID-19] would be my worst nightmare,\u201d he claimed in June. Yet, only a few months earlier, Fauci was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/health\/2020\/02\/17\/nih-disease-official-anthony-fauci-risk-of-coronavirus-in-u-s-is-minuscule-skip-mask-and-wash-hands\/4787209002\/\">telling<\/a> Americans that, far from being his biggest fear, the danger from the Wuhan virus was \u201cjust minuscule,\u201d so \u201cthere is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask.\u201d The media buried <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/426598a\">long-standing scientific concerns<\/a> that Fauci had been \u201csucking money away from work to understand and counter natural disease outbreaks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A March 2020 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/lifestyle\/style\/anthony-fauci-was-ready-for-this-america-was-not\/2020\/03\/20\/ee8ef3a6-69f6-11ea-b313-df458622c2cc_story.html\">hagiography<\/a> published in the Washington Post\u2019s Style section noted how the dapper doctor is, once again these days, a hit-the-front-page-every-day kind of guy, who \u201cseems to transcend time and space, appearing in all media at all times.\u201d The newspaper quoted House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer lamenting: \u201cIt\u2019s a shame that at the first hint of this we didn\u2019t just say to Tony Fauci, \u2018You\u2019re in charge, you have all the power you need, tell us what needs to be done.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The first COVID-19 vaccine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was developed by scientists at Pfizer, which took no funding from Fauci\u2019s NIAID. \u201cAll the investment for R&amp;D and manufacturing has been made by Pfizer at risk,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.snopes.com\/fact-check\/covid-vaccine-funded-by-trump\/\">says<\/a> the company.<\/p>\n<p>Thirty years ago, Nussbaum correctly diagnosed the primary cause of Fauci\u2019s many setbacks:<\/p>\n<blockquote>[T]he best scientists do not become administrators. The best scientists do not become coordinators of programs for other scientists in medical schools around the country. The best scientists stay in the labs, they don\u2019t push paper.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Fauci is an excellent politician who survived four decades and five presidents\u2014two Democrats, and three Republicans. Considering the mental acuity of the country\u2019s incoming president, and the ongoing anxiety among its citizens, it appears the politically skilled but scientifically inept Fauci administration is not going anywhere soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2003, terrorism was a more immediate national danger than infectious diseases. Dr. Anthony Fauci\u2019s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) had just redirected $117 million from infectious diseases to fund a new anthrax vaccine effort in response to the anthrax attacks that happened a week after 9\/11.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2273772,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2273772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}