Anthony Fauci Has PTSD from the Horrors of the AIDS Epidemic
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Anthony Fauci faced a more profound and terrifying pandemic before COVID, the early 80s plague years of the AIDS epidemic.
In 1981, when Fauci was head of a laboratory at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, researchers discovered that a growing group of Americans — predominantly young, gay men — were dying of cancers and infections. Scientists thought a virus might have been the root cause, but it wasn’t until 1984 that researchers discovered that HIV leads to a host of life-threatening illnesses now known as AIDS.
In the new Disney+ documentary Fauci streaming now, “It was all bad, bad, worse, bad, worse, bad, worse,” he says. “It was just so unbelievably frustrating when you’re used to being able to fix things and you’re just not really fixing anything.”
Fauci cries when remembering an AIDS patient who lost his vision from an infection that destroyed his retina. The man was always upbeat, Fauci says, and would often comment on Fauci’s smile.
“One day, we walked in in the morning and I walked up to the desk and he said, ‘Who’s there?’ And it was clear that he had gone completely blind,” Fauci says, confessing why he’s so affected by the memory, he says: “Post-traumatic stress syndrome — that’s what it is.”
Insider: In 1990, the group Act Up protested outside the National Institutes of Health to demand swifter research into HIV/AIDS treatment.
Activists accused Fauci of causing AIDS deaths by failing to fastrack clinical trials. The documentary shows footage from a speech Fauci gave that year at the International AIDS Conference, in which he hinted at how the backlash had affected him. “Activists are mistaken when they assume that scientists do not care about them,” Fauci said. “This is devastating to a physician scientist who has devoted years to AIDS research, particularly when they themselves see so many of their own patients suffering and dying.”
