His tenure at NIAID began at a terribly difficult time for health professionals, in America largely, but also elsewhere across the globe. At the onset of his leadership, turf wars between the different public health authorities, blood product suppliers and city / state governments (not to mention Reagan's 'small state' views) helped brew a toxic mix of indolence, misappropriation of funds and unscientific lack of objectivity which stymied efforts to define the nature of HIV?AIDS, thereby making efforts to find any kind of treatment impossible for a years.
Following that, there then ensued a quite deliberate lack of cooperation on the part of America's scientists who failed to see the vital importance of the discoveries at the Pasteur Institute and continued to peddle the wrong information which could only lead to the wrong treatments. This, it is widely believed by normally impartial people, was because any effective treatment or cure (!) had to be American. Yee haw.
Fauci was prominent in prominent in much of this.
Once it was established that normal, middle class folks could also contract the disease, he did make a concerted, laudable attempt at preventing its further pread at local and national level. (This led Larry Kramer, who for the best part of a decade had lambasted him) to give him the accolade of being the only hero of HIV.
Disease, like everything else, comes with social, economic and cultural views and results. I happen to think that Fausi may never have crossed over to the 'right' side had it remained the disease of society's 'expendables': the poor, the sex workers, the blacks, Latinos and, of course, the gays. I'd like to think I'm wrong but it's very difficult to see his Damascus moment in another way.
