By Gail Kansky

Winter 2023

When Dr. Anthony Fauci announced in August that he planned to retire from his high- profile positions as President Biden's top medical advisor and as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for the past 38 years, the story of his many successes could be found mentioned in most news alerts around the world. Few, if any, mentioned how he purposely ignored the millions of ME/CFIDS patients which he believed were merely psychologically affected and certainly not a serious immune disease that has been scientifically proven since.

More than two decades ago, Fauci encouraged the NIH to withdraw support of the research centers for ME/CFIDS and the amount of funding for the disease could be found only at the bottom of the Congressional level of expense. Since then, there have been many others who have tried to explain to Fauci how serious the illness was, such as the brilliant Dr. Ian Lipkin, but it was a disease that remained unmentioned by him as he continued to ignore it. Only the recent pandemic has begun to change this as long-haulers of the coronavirus emerged and were found to resemble ME/CFIDS. For decades, Fauci never even mentioned ME/CFIDS at any time and he continued this even after the pandemic began and many stories of long-haulers were written and mentioned the comparisons between the two illnesses. After months of articles were published on Long-Covid, by 2020 Fauci finally spoke about it and mentioned the similar symptoms and included what he called “chronic fatigue syndrome” although he separated CFS from ME as if they were two separate illnesses.

In 2021 Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. published a book entitled “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health”. It was very critical book that was very truthful and Fauci called the author “a very disturbed individual.” The book has been purchased by over one million people to date. However, no book can solve the problems of how the illness was perceived and the underlying consequences that patients were subjected to live with. Another book that was published years before that by Charles Ortleb, "Fauci: The Bernie Madoff of Science and the HIV Ponzi Scheme that Concealed the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic". Ortleb wrote, "November 2, 1984 was an especially tragic day in the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/AIDS epidemic. That was the day Anthony Fauci became the Director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases..." Chuck wrote several more books about ME/CFS and I read and enjoyed the truthfulness of every one of them.

Fauci has been the highest paid member of our national government. He has been paid a higher salary than anyone else including the president, Just days after he announced he would be leaving his government position, Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a GOP meeting, “Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac!”. There are many patients who have been suffering from ME/CFIDS for decades and know how Fauci wiped his hands of our illness and how he was responsible for the loss of research funds which sent work on this illness tumbling into darkness. Luckily, this never stopped the NCF as all donations to our charity go toward finding answers that will be benefit all PWCs. We don't sponsor galas; we don't have anyone work for a salary. We often paid for research via donations since we knew little to no funding would be available for this disease that has stolen most of our lives. But nothing could ever stop Fauci from continually believing that the majority of ME/CFIDS patients were psychologically depressed by an underlying mental illness. Nobody at the NCF will miss him.