Mary Woodward Lasker Award
for Public Service

Acceptance remarks by Anthony Fauci

Thank you for this extraordinary honor. I am truly humbled. I am a scientist and clinician; and yet I have been blessed with the unique opportunity to pursue my passion for public service at the same time that I remain engrossed in hands-on basic and clinical science and science administration. I had been at the NIH for approximately 10 years as a researcher studying host defense mechanisms against infectious diseases when the first cases of what would later become known as AIDS were first recognized in the summer of 1981. The scientific opportunities for discovery related to this new disease were seemingly unlimited and I pursued these with intensity. Yet, deep down, I felt a constant nagging uneasiness that there was much more that I should be doing on a broader scale not only with HIV/AIDS, but with malaria, tuberculosis and other great killers that continued to claim so many lives despite our modern-day technologies.

I was not alone in this feeling, but I was lucky. Being in Washington, D.C. as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases put me in the right place at the right time to pursue these interests. To my great fortune, I was given the opportunity to develop enduring relationships with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle and to interact personally with each of the last four Presidents. Regardless of their range of ideologies, they all wanted scientific advice on domestic and global health issues from scientists whom they could trust to speak the truth. It has been and is an extraordinary experience. I realized early on that when you deal in the heady company of Presidents, Cabinet Secretaries and members of Congress and are asked for advice, you must be prepared to disappoint people with the truth and risk never getting asked back into the inner circle. I accepted that concept. Science is truth and as a scientist I told the truth and it actually worked; I kept getting asked back.

It was in this setting that President Bush asked then Secretary of HHS Tommy Thompson and me to go to sub-Saharan Africa in 2002 to report back on the AIDS situation there. When we returned I made my best argument for the need for a comprehensive and transforming program led by the U.S. government that was based on sound scientific and public health principles. This led to my being tasked with formulating and developing, with a lot of help from some wonderful people, the framework for what has come to be known as the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief or PEPFAR, a now highly successful program to treat, prevent and care for HIV/AIDS in 15 developing countries.

I never would have dreamed back in 1981 as a classically trained physician/scientist searching for broader meaning to my work on the pathogenic mechanisms of HIV disease and caring for individual patients that I would be given the opportunity to influence decisions by the leaders of our nation to positively impact the lives of so many people. It was an opportunity and an honor that I will cherish forever. It was a reward in and of itself, and yet there is so much more to do. To receive the Mary Woodard Lasker Award for Public Service in connection with this experience is more than anyone can ask for.

I want to close by thanking my NIH and HHS friends and colleagues who are here today to share this moment with me. I particularly recognize the former and present NIH Directors who are here and who have been so supportive of me throughout the years: Jim Wyngaarden, who appointed me to my current position in 1984; my friend and former NIH Director Harold Varmus; and Elias Zerhouni, who has been a friend and colleague over the past 6 years. I also thank my lovely wife, Christine Grady, and my children Jenny, Megan and Alison, who are both my anchors and the wind in my sails. Thank you all so much.