Science: Anthony Fauci on becoming the ‘devil’ and a warning for his successor, Sept 2023

Anthony Fauci on becoming the ‘devil’ and a warning for his successor

In an interview with Science Anthony Fauci reviews his career and states that he believes that ME/CFS is currently the most interesting disease to study for him. Of course that has not resulted in it receiving adequate funding, the opposite has been the case, especially under his reign, but it seems Long Covid might have changed his mind.

Have we found the advocate we have always been looking for, is this an interview from a parallel universe or is it a reflection of his own neglect and underfunding now that he doesn't have to back up his words by action anymore as he is out of office?


Q: Let’s say you were starting your research career today. What would you study?
A: I keep getting fascinated by autoimmune diseases that seem to get triggered by an aberrant stimulation of the immune system. More than 40 years ago, when I was the physician for the NIH, I was struck by a subset of patients who would come in usually following a viral infection and they didn’t know what it was because no one ever cultured it. They would say, “Something is wrong, I just don’t feel right. I get tired twice as easy, I feel achy, my rhythm is screwed up, I don’t sleep very well.” People later started talking about myalgic encephalitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. What is it about? I’m fascinated by this. There’s a combination of genetic, epigenetic, environmental factors that kicks off in people following an infection.


The full interview can be found here:
https://www.science.org/content/article/anthony-fauci-becoming-devil-and-warning-his-successor

 

Yay. Free Press.

Oh dear.

 

Ugh.

 

I do believe him when he says this, see no reason to think he'd make this up. But his description is very lacking, and I'd be far more interested in knowing why he couldn't do this when he was director of the NIH institute that is most capable of dealing with this. He could have done 1000x more in a single year than if he'd spent his entire career as a researcher, and that's accounting for his celebrity status.

It truly is fascinating, but it's so much more disabling that what he describes. That bit is disappointing. It's not even hard to understand.

 

Will he work with Baraniuk, I wonder.

Curious that he didn't call it CFS, that he knew to call it ME/CFS, but that he'd characterize it in such a tone deaf manner.

How'd he get here? Seems like a bunch of assumptions folded into this observation.

ETA: It's easy to read stuff into a what is likely a meaningless reference. Except, it's uttered by someone who is used to having what he says scrutinized. So, balance I suppose.

 

Nice, at 82 years of age his career is just getting started so I'm sure he will have plenty of avenues to start studying ME, and he will totally be held accountable for his commitment

 

His hundredth birthday can then be celebrated with the intramural study being published in the year 2041. Just in time to get the ball rolling...

 

It is just the mantra. But is intriguing that the way he says it makes no sense. Genetic factors do not kick off after infection. They were always there. And the environmental factor will be the infection which kicked in already - not off after.

His mistake is to miss the stochastic element emphasised by Stastny. Stastny was a great scientist. He showed that immune genes have a role in autoimmunity and while at it pointed out that chance was probably more important than environment. Fauci made his name out of giving people dying of renal lupus cyclophosphamide. It kept a lot of people alive but a good number developed infertility and bladder cancer. He has to be given the credit for being proactive.

It was under his watch that Covid-19 killed a million Americans. That story has not been fully told by any means yet.

 

Yes. It's how he is packaging ME/CFS, for lack of a better word. I think you are alluding to the genetics thing, but the whole little tangent seems off somehow.

 

Totally get what you mean but to be fair now, it's on the medical journal to publish [most likely NJEM, is my hunch..] as NIH released the study to whichever journal is peer reviewing (October will make it month 6 at said journal)

 

For all I care they can take 2 years to peer review it. The problem is not uploading a preprint to the Arvix and that's on the authors.

 

Or maybe Nature.. it says 7 months on their site from submission to publication.. which would make it November.

 

These timeframes are rather rough suggestions than anything else. Take for example the recent Iwasaki paper published in Nature. It took one year and 1 month from submission to publication. However, they also released a preprint once they submitted the paper so that was never an issue.

 

I hope the approach has the benefit of a "media blitz" with solid and unassailable publications that have all passed peer review in the leading journals.

I recall reading from EndME here, that multiple supplementary papers (presumably on standby having already passed peer review) will follow publication of the main paper.

 

Is that really the case though? If anything I feel like Iwasaki's recent publication received twice the media attention, once as preprint and later again when it was published after passing peer review.

When I asked two different groups in the ME/CFS/LC field why they don't make their preprints public, the response was once that there's too much speculation in this field with people jumping aboard too many bandwagons and the other group didn't even seem aware of open access preprint repositories. Overall I find neither answer convincing, especially as this reasoning doesn't apply to other sciences like mathematics and physics which are a lot more advanced in this aspect. I might be missing something, but to me it's simply "bad/outdated" conduct of research even though it's unfortunately still quite common in biomedical research.

 

Hmmm... methinks Fauci is trying to rewrite history somewhat. Or maybe, not so much rewrite, but establish it - as it is very difficult to find out what he has actually said about ME/CFS in the past.

Cort thinks he remembers: https://www.healthrising.org/blog/2...ing-it-about-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-me-cfs/

And I've had a little look back through my copy of OW to find this extract from the chapter on 1991 (Black Diamonds - A conspiracy of dunces - p471):

That sort of attitude crops up elsewhere as well - but there are no direct quotes from Fauci himself and there only seems to be HJ's account that has this. However, we know this was a common sentiment at the time (on both sides of the Atlantic, and in Australia) and of course much more recently. I just wish someone of his ilk would acknowledge that.

 

I thought I'd quote these posts by @Kalliope and @ahimsa as they are in line with the above publication and add some more context.