Episode 92: Terry Michael Traces Anthony Fauci's 30 Years at NIAID as the 'J. Edgar Hoover of Public Health' [ 1 h 03 min 02 s | 28.86 MB ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1412)

As director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Anthony Fauci controls the direction of AIDS research, the bestowing of funds, and the propaganda of fear and “scientific opportunity” (profit). And he’s been there 30 years this month. Washington, D.C., journalist and former “How Positive Are You” co-host Terry Michael returns to survey the accountability-free “Cult of Tony” and its far-reaching influence on AIDS research and treatment. “If there is one great threat to public health in the world, I’ll have to lay that at the doorstep of Tony Fauci,” he says.

“Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.” — Hannah Arendt

Dr. Fauci is the consummate bureaucrat who took the reins at NIAID during the “perfect storm” of a ripening gay liberation movement unwilling to take responsibility for its excesses, a conservative cultural backlash, a failed direction in cancer research, threatened budget cuts and an embattled U.S. president (Ronald Reagan, accused at the time of insensitivity to gay men). Sycophants often praise Dr. Fauci for the “precision of thought” he honed in a Jesuit school, but never for critical thinking.

In 1981, Dr. Fauci shifted the focus of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation, which he headed, to investigating the new “gay disease.” Naturally, the lab considered GRID, as it was then called, as an immune problem. It looked at viral causation exclusively before any virus had even been “discovered” (in 1984). Given that his earlier research investigated the “precise mechanisms” of, and drug treatments for, inflammatory immune-mediated diseases – but not their causes – it is not surprising that his control over AIDS research also led to drugging symptoms rather than investigating origins in lifestyle, nutrition and drug abuse, which might have encouraged patients to detoxify, nourish and heal their own bodies.

Cozy arrangements have enriched both the NIAID director personally and the drug companies and research institutions that benefit from his favors. Michael puts Dr. Fauci’s close relationship with Gilead Sciences, Inc., in particular, under the microscope. The biotech company profits from government-hyped research and Human Rights Campaign propaganda pushing sexually active gay men to take its proprietary drug Truvada® to prevent “HIV” infection – “pre-exposure prophylaxis” (PrEP). (Terry talked to us about PrEP recently, in Episode 87; his report on this profiteering on healthy people, and Dr. Fauci’s role in it, is available here.)

Terry Michael is the executive director of the Washington Center for Politics & Journalism (WCP&J), offering The Politics & Journalism Semester for college students since 1989. After beginning a career in newspaper journalism in 1969, he became political press secretary to several Democratic U.S. Congressmen and Senators, and the 1987-88 Paul Simon presidential campaign, from 1973 to 1988. Terry is the recipient of numerous journalism awards, including the 2001 Distinguished Service Award of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, and the 2002 Presidential Award of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. He has been an adjunct and guest lecturer on media and politics both home and abroad. A former press secretary for the Democratic Party, he now identifies himself as a libertarian Democrat. He is a gay man of the first liberated generation.

We also discussed an attack on our comments page against Bobby Russell’s lawsuit (which we discussed in Episodes 71 and 76 and posted as an “XTRA” link to “The Infectious Myth” Episode 29) against his University of Kentucky doctors for a false-positive “HIV test.” We support Bobby’s quest for truth in testing and ask you to support him too. The next false positive could be your own. . . . In another case of questionable test results, HPAY co-host Elizabeth Ely discussed the “HIV status” of the late heavyweight boxer Tommy Morrison with his widow, Trisha Harding Morrison, in Episode 70.