him on behalf of all of us. >> we will. thanks alicia. thank you. well, there will be a parade tomorrow for this year's nba champions, the boston celtics. we give our heros parades. and the early days of space travel, we gave astronauts parades. but then we shot so many astronauts into space and even to the moon we stopped giving them parades. we took space travel for granted. it was no longer the stuff of heroism. our most important heros have always been taken for granted. i am talking about the most important work a human being can do. they save lives. there is no higher calling than saving lives. some of you might know what it feels like but most of us don't. most of us have never and will never save a life. not one. we won't drag a wounded soldier off a battlefield. drag a dying person to an emergency room just in time. we won't pull a drowning child out of the water and we won't treat patients in hospitals who would die without our medical expertise. not every doctor and nurse saves lives. some areas of medicine do not involve life and death. some doctors occasionally save lives. and then, there is dr. anthony fauci. he has had the experience as an attending physician of saving the life of a patient in his care and in his 54 years at the national institute of health fighting every infectious disease that emerged in those 54 years and saving living. dr. fauci's work has saved millions upon millions of lives. >> who are the heros who are there in american life today? who are the ones that you would point out to young americans as figures who should inspire this country? >> dr. anthony fauci. he is a fine research top doctor at national institutes of health. working hard for research on the disease of aids. >> after years of the research and clinical struggle with hiv/aids, dr. fauci's work helped us get through the medical breakthroughs that meant aids was no longer a death sentence. and he did not believe that his moral responsibility as a physician, public health official stopped at the border. he convinced republican president george w. bush to fully fund a massive aids intervention project in africa that was called the emergency plan for aids relief. pepfar, the largest global health initiative for a single disease by any country in history. that was dr. anthony fauci's work. and that program saved over 25 million lives. >> i hate to use the word gay in connection with sodomy. there is nothing gay about these people. engaging in incredibly offensive and revolting conduct that has led to the proliferation of aids. >> there is a feeling among members of any of the number of professions or just the general population that patients with aids, many of whom are homosexual, are a little bit different. i think that has led to a little bit of a complacency about the approach toward this disease. >> dr. fauci has always had to deal with harsh critics of his work and attacks on him personally. really nasty attacks. on some aids research activists were dissatisfied, understandably since they were dying. dissatisfied with the medical progress in treating aids. they called dr. fauci a murderer. the playwright larry kramer called dr. fauci a murderer more than once. dr. fauci's reaction to those attacks was to invite the people who were attacking him and calling him a murderer into his office to hear their complaints. he went to greenwich village to meetings to hear their complaints. he went to san francisco to speak to those people in the streets so hear their complaints. some of those protesters who called dr. fauci a murderer eventually became his best friends. dr. fauci's work enabled larry kramer who was hiv positive to live to the age of 84. and their last words to each other? and what were the last weeks of larry kramer's life were? larry saying i love you tony and i tearfully responded i love you, too, larry. that story is told in anthony fauci's powerful hugely informative and deeply emotional new book on call. then came aids. he filled the national institute of health with as many beds as possible to serve aids patients directly and treat them directly himself. and for the first time in his medical career, he would not be a lifesaver. he did not have the tools or the medicines. he was helplessly watching his patients die. ron had gone completely blind. the virus, despite treatment that was obviously inadequate, had literally chewed up the critical sight elements of his retina from the time we had made morning rounds to the time we walked into the room that evening. we left and finished our rounds. i burst into tears. i was not just deeply shakenned and saddened, i was frustrated and angry. ron would soon die. this was just one such story. when all of the rest of us and everyone in the world were waiting for a covid vaccine, we did not have to wait as long as aids patients had to wait for relief. thanks to the years, decades of research on vaccines and infectious diseases that anthony fauci and others committed their lives to. you all know the recent completely undeserved attacks that dr. fauci has suffered including in a recent congressional hearing. this is not the night for that. they have had their microphones. they will not be heard here. this hour is for you to finally, really meet the man. the man behind the title. the man behind all that wise medical advice that he has delivered to all of us for decades. that man's compassion and commitment and wisdom filled the pages of his new book that is about his own love story with his wife and family. his scientific detective work that actually lets you feel like you understand the medicine as you are reading it. and you do, but don't try to repeat it to anyone as i tried to. and also, this book is full of dr. fauci's steadiness and reliability under pressure. the bedside manner this country has always needed in a public health crisis. that is the story told in this book and i invite you tonight to meet anthony fauci. dr. fauci, thank you very much for joining us tonight. i have my own impression prior to holding this book in my hands. then this story begins in bensonhurst brooklyn with you literally living above your father's store where you got your first feeling for medicine. >> right, my father owned the drugstore in brooklyn new york and we lived on top of the drugstore. my bedroom was right on top. and this was the 40s and the 50s and at that time, pharmacies in the neighborhood were not the chain pharmacies we have now. and the pharmacist was the local psychiatrist marriage counselor and dock for the people there who maybe could not get to a physician. so i learned right from the very beginning this issue of caring about other people. so i really attribute that to my mother and my father who actually lived a life like that. and i joked around in our family, it's a joke in the family. my father was a very poor businessman because the people in the neighborhood who were not wealthy at all, it was a working class neighborhood in brooklyn, often could not afford the price of the prescription. and he would essentially give it to them either on a bill which they never paid or essentially free. so we didn't do very well financially. but the satisfaction of taking care of the neighborhood was something that i learned from the time i was eight, nine, ten years old. >> this is so familiar to me. our neighborhood pharmacy in boston. he let people get medicine on credit. let the kids hang around in the drugstore and crowd things up. and he was an absolutely beloved figure. and for a lot of people he was the closest people would get to medical advice. as you were living there above the store when it comes time to go to high school, you have to take three subways to get out of bensonhurst. across the east river. all the way up to the upper east side to go to a catholic boy's school where you were given a scholarship and that place became the real introduction to academics for you. >> it was regis high school, a jesuit high school in manhattan as you described. it really was underscoring and solidifying the things i learned when i was eight, nine, ten years old with my parents. because the motto of the school, it is an old boy's school, still is. was men for others which is kind of the mantra of the jesuits. and i learned there that same sort of mission in life, whatever you do, you don't have to go into codified public service. but whatever you do, you should try and serve mankind and hopefully make a contribution to making the world a better place. >> listen, i went to the schools too. they said that stuff to all of us. most of us didn't do it. okay? it didn't stick. okay? and we did not become the selfless kind of people that those jesuits were. i had great priests who were teachers who i just admired their selflessness and their complete lack of concern with any material objects at all. the highest possible incomes a doctor could earn, but you made this choice. which you ascribe in your book to the nuns you had in elementary school. and to the teachers you had in high school. and somewhat to your parents but a lot of people were exposed to those very same influences and it didn't take. why do you think it took with you? >> well, you know, it was the gratification and satisfaction, the privilege of trying to save somebody's lives. there i did multiple years of residency. i took a fellowship at the nih. >> and you were only signing up for three years. you thought i will do three years down there. and move on. >> i thought i would head back to new york city and open up an office back there. >> you had a huge offer in new york city of back at cornell medical center, making you the big doc, that would have involved a private practice in association with that where you could have been the richest doctor in new york. >> yeah. but i got. >> and you said no, let me do more government service. >> yes. the reason i did that, i went down there, i realized something. that not everyone needs to do that. but getting involved in research in which you can solve a clinical problem, develop a therapeutic regimen, that would not only help you save the individual patient that you are caring for, but that would have a multiplier effect that if you do make a discovery or at least incrementally advance the field, you could have an impact on many, many fold more people than just the individual patient. so, i had a wonderful situation of caring on hands for my patient ins the research hospital. at the same time as publishing papers that others, not only in the united states, but perhaps throughout the world who could use it with their patients and to me, quite frankly, that's priceless. i used to say i would do this for nothing. it was so gratifying. >> in medical salary terms you were. but, and your feeling about the work comes through. repeatedly in this book, you have these very simple sentences about how much i love this. and it is so, it comes across so clearly. the other thing that you do so brilliantly in this book and i believe i'm the test for this. is you make medicine understandable. at least when i'm holding the book in my hands and i'm reading your description of the mrna vaccines and the platform and how it works, it all makes sense to me in a way that i'm sure i would be just intimidated right out of the classroom in the medical school. but you make us understand that as we are reading. >> that's what i try to do. it goes to the things the jesuit caught me. the economy of expression. make it clear so that people could understand what you are talking about. because one of the most important things about communication i have found is not to impress people about how smart you are. but to get them to understand what the heck you are talking about. and that is one of the things i learned, that is the most important thing. that's what i try to do in the book. didn't try to dumb it down at all. but i try to make it clear so that people at various levels would understand it. >> yeah. the doubters about these vaccines and any vaccines would learn so much just by reading your description of them. i want to talk about larry kramer and others, pierce daley. we did a live event here in new york city. these people were just incredibly brave and angry heros in their own right. both of them suffering from hiv themselves when there was no cure. when there was no hope. leaders of the angriest possible protests against you at the time. there wasn't so much a specific accusation against you. i was watching a documentary about this. that you mentioned in your book last night. one of the chants is they are demanding a cure. it is the only protest i have ever seen which is demanding a scientific result that does not currently exist. everyone else is demanding an action that the government can do. this was something that needed patient research you are doing that research, being attacked by them. and somehow, they become your friends. because you make a decision i have never seen a public official make before or since. you see them coming down to protest. you see peter staley literally climbing up the wall and you think after they get arrested and processed by the police, invite them in, i want to talk to them. and you did that. >> yeah. well, there are several reasons. one was the feeling i had for what they were doing through. their purpose was to get the attention of the medical community, the scientific community and the regulatory community geared successfully in the past to handle diseases where you get interventions out that are safe and effective but it is done in a rather rigid way. inclusion and exclusion criteria. very little room for compassionate usage and a regulatory process that takes years with a group, once they got ill, this was very early in the outbreak. they had 10 to 15 months to live. so the process as successful as it was with other things didn't work for them so they wanted to be a part of the dialogue to discuss what the scientific agenda would be. and the scientists understandably, but totally incorrectly were saying we know what's best for you. we're the scientists. we're the regulators and at first i felt that way. for a very brief period of time. then they started to be proactive, disruptive. which made the scientists pull back even more. when i saw how much pain and fear they had, the empathy that goes all the way back to my childhood said let me listen to what they are saying. once i listened, they made absolute sense. i said honestly if i were in their shoes i would be doing exactly what they were doing. that is when i said i really need to talk to these people. and when you spoke to them, they turned out to be brilliant and understanding and the process of research and regulation today are better off because of what the activists did. and that was one of the best things i have ever done in my life. >> just a brilliant and such a humane choice. there is a beautiful two-hander to write with two actors of anthony fauci and larry kramer together on stage. it almost writes itself. if you read this book. we will squeeze in a quick break. when we come back, we will give the audience a chance to consider which president said this. they can think about it over the break. we love you, tony. thanks for all you did for our country and the world. i will not miss washington very much when i leave but i will miss you and people like you. the answer to which president said that will be right after this break. e right after this break. ♪♪ ♪♪ citi's industry leading global payments solutions help their clients move money around the world seamlessly in over 180 countries... and help a partner like the world food programme as they provide more than food to people in need. together, citi and the world food programme empower families across the globe. ♪♪ my moderate to severe plaque psoriasis held me back... now with skyrizi, i'm all in 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[ laughter ] >> oh boy. yeah. that was a test. the deep state department. you did such a good job of not doing that in every other press conference. but the moment came where even stoney anthony fauci just couldn't quite believe what he was hearing. so what happened after that? >> you know, he wasn't phased with that. >> someone had to tell him. because you are behind him. so the knives came out at the white house to say hey. fauci just did this thing. >> i think that was the beginning of sort of evolving of the hostility for me from the staff at the time when the president himself was not hostile to me. we had quite a good relationship early on. it was only when something like that is you know, a little ridiculous to say that. so it doesn't encroach upon the lane i'm responsible for. but when