My Feb. 2024 Post about "On Call": Dr. Fauci's Memoir

"On Call: A Doctor's Service," by Anthony Fauci, was published by Viking in 2024 to glowing reviews and became a #1 New York Times bestseller.

I went back and reviewed an essay I wrote in Feb. 2024 about Anthony Fauci’s forthcoming memoir, On Call: A Doctor’s Service, which was published by Viking a few months later to rave reviews such as the following:

“An eventful autobiography [and] a classic American story…Gripping.”—The Washington Post

“One of the most consequential and most prominent [careers] in American medicine in the past fifty years.”—Jerome Groopman, The New Yorker

For many years I have marveled at how most of the New York publishing industry—both books and periodicals—has become so incredibly staid, shallow, and institutional in its service of prevailing orthodoxies, pieties, and political imperatives.

The entire event of publishing and reviewing Fauci’s memoir was a matter of cliches and conformity, with zero critical evaluation. It’s as though the publishing industry is staffed by robots.

The following is what I wrote on this Substack back in February 2024.

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Over coffee this morning, I found myself wondering what Dr. Fauci is up to these days. I was already aware that he’d joined the Georgetown School of Medicine faculty as a “distinguished professor” last summer. More recently in the news is the announcement that his memoir—On Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service—will be published by Viking on June 18, 2024.

The following is the publisher’s description of the book on Amazon:

The memoir by the doctor who became a beacon of hope for millions through the COVID pandemic, and whose six-decade career in high-level public service put him in the room with seven presidents

Anthony Fauci is arguably the most famous – and most revered – doctor in the world today. His role guiding America sanely and calmly through Covid (and through the torrents of Trump) earned him the trust of millions during one of the most terrifying periods in modern American history, but this was only the most recent of the global epidemics in which Dr. Fauci played a major role. His crucial role in researching HIV and bringing AIDS into sympathetic public view and his leadership in navigating the Ebola, SARS, West Nile, and anthrax crises, make him truly an American hero.

His memoir reaches back to his boyhood in Brooklyn, New York, and carries through decades of caring for critically ill patients, navigating the whirlpools of Washington politics, and behind-the-scenes advising and negotiating with seven presidents on key issues from global AIDS relief to infectious disease  preparedness at home. ON CALL will be an inspiration for readers who admire and are grateful to him and for those who want to emulate him in public service. He is the embodiment of “speaking truth to power,” with dignity and results.

It’s notable that Dr. Fauci hasn’t been “on call” as a treating physician since he joined NIAID as a clinical associate in 1968.

Downright astonishing is the fact that, within the same country, public perceptions of a man can be so diametrically opposed. It’s probably true that, during the COVID pandemic, Dr. Fauci was “a beacon of hope for millions,” even though he did the following:

1). Oversaw grants to the key players who were responsible for creating SARS-CoV-2 in a lab.

2). Concealed the true (lab) origin of SARS-CoV-2.

3). Undermined President Trump’s advocacy of early treatment modalities such as hydroxychloroquine, and was generally dismissive of early treatment.

4). Strongly advocated the widespread use of Remdesivir, in spite of clear data that it causes kidney damage, especially in patients with already compromised kidney function.

5). Was a key actor pushing mass vaccination with mRNA gene transfer shots that are neither safe nor effective.

Especially bizarre in the book description is the final sentence: “He is the embodiment of “speaking truth to power,” with dignity and results.

In fact, Dr. Fauci is the embodiment of overarching, illegitimate power that has no place in a constitutional republic.