Before Anthony Fauci retired from his lengthy run as the US government’s top infectious disease doctor, major pharmaceutical companies tried to lure him away from his post by offering him seven-figure jobs – but he turned them down because he “cared about … the health of the country” too much, he says in a new interview.
Fauci’s comments on his loyalty to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niad) – which he directed for 38 years before retiring in December 2022 – come only a couple of weeks after he testified to Congress about receiving “credible death threats” from far-right extremists over his efforts to slow the spread of Covid-19 at the beginning of the pandemic.
Speaking to medical correspondent Dr Jonathan LaPook for the upcoming CBS News Sunday Morning episode, Fauci confirmed that pharmaceutical corporations offered him big money or chunks of private equity if he would leave Niad and work for them instead.
“At the time that I was getting offered [that], I was making $125,000 to $200,000 – then I would get offered a job that would get me $5m, $6m, $7m a year,” Fauci said in an interview excerpt published on Friday by CBS.
LaPook asked Fauci: “So why didn’t you take it?”
“Because I really felt what I was doing was having an impact on what I cared about, which was the health of the country and, indirectly, the health of the world,” Fauci replied. “Because the United States is such a leader in science, medicine and public health that what we do indirectly spills over on to the rest of the world. And to me, that is priceless.”
That exchange in LaPook’s interview with Fauci – which CBS plans to air in full at about 9am ET on Sunday – perhaps adds context to the bewilderment that the veteran doctor expressed during his 3 June appearance before a subcommittee of the US House’s oversight and accountability committee while discussing his efforts leading the country’s fight against Covid.
Fauci recounted how two people had been arrested in connection with “credible death threats” against him and his family, requiring them to get round-the-clock security protection. He also said his retirement from the public sector had not stemmed the harassment.
“It is very troublesome to me,” Fauci testified. “It is much more trouble because they’ve involved my wife and my three daughters at these moments.”
Far-right representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has embodied the contempt that US Republicans generally held against the doctor at the height of the pandemic in the spring of 2020. She once sparked outrage by comparing him to the Nazi physician Josef Mengele, who experimented on Jewish people imprisoned in concentration camps during the Holocaust.
She also assailed Fauci during his testimony, arguing that it was abusive for Fauci to recommend that Americans wear masks and maintain social distancing at the start of Covid, when there were no protective vaccines available.
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“Do the American people deserve to be abused like that, Mr Fauci? Because you’re not Dr, you’re Mr, Fauci,” Taylor Greene said at the hearing.
She later told reporters that Fauci should be imprisoned as well as “tried for mass murder and crimes against humanity” over his attempts to limit the number of Covid deaths in the US, which exceeded 350,000 in 2020.
Fauci later described Taylor Greene’s behavior as an “unusual performance”.
In a news release promoting the interview on Sunday, CBS said Fauci would elaborate on his reaction to the recent congressional hearing. The network also said Fauci would discuss his memoir, On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service, which is scheduled to be released on Tuesday.
