Anthony Fauci on the History of Infectious Disease | Big Think

Anthony Fauci on the History of Infectious Disease

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Anthony Fauci on the past, present and future battles against disease.

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Anthony Fauci:

Anthony Fauci is the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He is an immunologist who has made substantial contributions to research on AIDS and other immunodeficiencies. He has pioneered the field of human immunoregulation and developed effective therapies for formally fatal inflammatory and immune-mediated diseases. In the field of AIDS research, he has helped contribute to an understanding of how the AIDS virus destroys the body's defenses leading to its susceptibility to deadly infections.

He has also served as an editor of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine and has authored, coauthored or edited more than 1,100 scientific publications, including several textbooks. Dr. Fauci is a key advisor to the White House and Department of Health and Human Services on global AIDS issues and public health protections against emerging infectious disease threats, such as pandemic influenza. He was educated at Cornell University Medical College and holds 32 honorary doctorate degrees.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Who are we?

Anthony Fauci: That’s a difficult question. I’ll start with the one that I’m very familiar with because it’s what I do. And I think that the whole issue of global health and health, if you look at history, how diseases have shaped societies going back from the Bubonic plague of the early centuries, to the pandemic influenza of 1918, to the total decimation of the Inca and Aztec populations by measles and small pox, I think that health issues have played a major role on how society has been shaped.

And then, as the era of understanding disease and being able to do something about disease has occurred, there has been a rather dramatic protection against the unavoidable decimation of disease; but mostly in the developed world.

And the thing that I see even now as an answer to your question is that we need to have a more global appreciation of the problems that other people have. Because it’s very interesting that, some years ago when I was first getting involved in medicine – and even in the arena of infectious diseases, which is my sub-specialty – there were very well placed people in this country [USA] who were actually saying that you can forget about infectious diseases because they’ve essentially been conquered. We’ve got vaccines. We’ve got anti-microbials. You can conquer infectious diseases.

Which means they weren’t paying attention to, as they were saying that; maybe in our own country, in the United States, or Europe, or Australia, or Canada that was going on; but in the developing world, more than a million people were dying of malaria. A million and a half people were dying of tuberculosis. Hundreds of thousands, if not a million people were dying of neglected tropical diseases [NTDs].

So really, disease has a major impact not only historically in the shaping of our society, but also even today where there are the “haves” and the “have nots” of the world. I would hope that an appreciation of that will have us continue to try and do more and more.

Science is telling us that we can do phenomenal things if we put our minds and our resources to it. I think science is probably the best example of you put resources into something, and you let the creativity and the brilliance of the minds throughout the world – and certainly not only in this country [USA], throughout the world – and phenomenally good things can happen.

You’ve got to make sure that there’s checks and balances on that, because science can also lead to things that are not so good. There’s ethical issues of manipulation at the genomic level. The whole issues of embryos and creating people to your own fashionable, boutique-liking. All those things you’ve got to be really, really careful of.

But science, at its most pure, where you’re looking for discovery, and you’re going to use discovery for the betterment of mankind; I think science stands out among some of the most important endeavors that humankind can pursue.

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