Dr. Anthony Fauci left his four-decade position as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in December, and NIAID has commenced a search for who will replace the controversial doctor at the helm of the key federal agency.
Since the controversial top doctor left his post at the end of 2022, his former deputy Hugh Auchincloss has been performing the role of acting NIAID director.
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Applications for a permanent replacement following the National Institutes of Health’s “nationwide search” were due Tuesday. As the search for a permanent NIAID director continues, no big names have yet been publicly raised for the job, and it is possible that Auchincloss could get the permanent position given his longtime leadership under Fauci.
“The National Institutes of Health is seeking exceptional candidates for the position of Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,” the NIH announced in November 2022. “This position offers a unique and exciting opportunity for an exceptional leader to serve as the chief executive for NIAID who will provide visionary leadership” in combating global diseases and pandemics.
Whoever is picked for the NIH director position will require confirmation by the Senate Health Committee and then a majority vote in the full Senate. The NIAID gig, which falls under the NIH, does not need Senate confirmation.
“Dr. Hugh Auchincloss has agreed to serve as acting director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,” the NIH announced this week. “He has served as NIAID’s principal deputy director since joining NIH in 2006. He has played a key role in research planning and implementation activities.”
Auchincloss, who is also the father of second-term Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), is wrapped up in the Wuhan lab controversy, and his name has been repeatedly raised by Republican investigators.
The NIH provided millions of dollars to Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance over the years, and Daszak maintained a long working relationship with Wuhan lab “bat lady” Shi Zhengli, sending her lab at least $600,000 in NIH funding. Daszak was part of the WHO-China team that dismissed the lab leak hypothesis as “extremely unlikely” in 2021.
Fauci sent an email to Auchincloss on Feb. 1, 2020, with an attachment and the subject line “IMPORTANT.” Fauci wrote, “Hugh: It is essential that we speak this AM. … Read this paper as well as the e-mail that I will forward to you now. You will have tasks today that must be done.”
The email from Fauci included an attached research article published in 2015 in Nature Medicine titled “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronavirus shows potential for human emergence” that was authored in part by Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan lab.
Auchincloss replied, “The paper you sent me says the experiments were performed before the gain of function pause but have since been reviewed and approved by NIH. Not sure what that means since [NIH official Emily Erbelding] is sure that no Coronavirus work [has] gone through the P3 framework. She will try to determine if we have any distant ties to this work abroad.” Fauci replied, “OK. Stay tuned.”
Critics of Fauci were unhappy when the news initially leaked in December 2022 that Auchinloss would likely be replacing Fauci.
“Auchincloss — the cipher who ran Fauci’s errands and followed Fauci’s instructions like ‘you will have tasks today that must be done’ — now has been appointed acting director of NIAID,” Dr. Richard Ebright, the lab director for the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University, tweeted in December.
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Justin Goodman, senior vice president of advocacy and public policy for the White Coat Waste Project, said Auchincloss “has lobbied to build more risky biolabs and has been Fauci’s right-hand man for the last 16 years.”
Fauci gave some advice to whoever ends up holding his former position. “The message is to stick with the science — the data, the evidence — and don’t get involved in politics,” Fauci said in December. “There’s a big difference between policy and politics.”
