Thank You, Dr Fauci. We Proudly Stand With You.

On behalf of the International Antiviral Society–USA, we want to say something clearly and without qualification:

Thank you, Dr Anthony Fauci.

Thank you for more than five decades of extraordinary public service, scientific leadership, and commitment to the health of people in the United States and around the world.

Thank you for your leadership during the darkest years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, when fear, stigma, uncertainty, and death surrounded a disease we did not yet understand. You helped transform the federal response to HIV/AIDS and the way research was conducted. You championed and expanded HIV research, helped accelerate the development and evaluation of lifesaving therapies, and supported new approaches—including expanded and compassionate access—that allowed people with life-threatening illness to receive promising investigational treatments while research continued.

Just as importantly, you listened.

At a time when the relationship between government, researchers, clinicians, and people with HIV was often deeply strained, you opened the doors. You met with activists and community leaders. You listened to people who were angry, frightened, grieving, and demanding change. And when their arguments were right, you were willing to change the system.

That willingness—to listen, to learn, and to bring affected communities into the scientific process—helped change HIV research permanently. It helped establish a model of community engagement that continues to influence clinical research and public health today.

Thank you for your unwavering commitment to rigorous science and for your insistence that evidence—not politics, convenience, fear, or ideology—must guide decisions about human health.

Thank you for your leadership through successive infectious-disease challenges and public-health crises, from HIV/AIDS to emerging infectious diseases and, ultimately, COVID-19.

During the frightening and uncertain first years of the COVID-19 pandemic, you once again became a trusted source of scientific information for millions of people. You explained what was known, acknowledged what was not yet known, and changed recommendations when the evidence changed. And when inaccurate or misleading statements were made—even when correcting them placed you in an extraordinarily difficult public and political position—you continued to speak for the science.

That mattered.

Thank you for your steadfast support of the scientific and clinical communities working in HIV and other infectious diseases. Thank you for helping create an environment in which collaborative, independent scientific exchange could flourish, including the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections. CROI has become one of the world’s most important scientific meetings in HIV and related infectious diseases, and your support, participation, and commitment to the science have been part of its history from the beginning.

Thank you for the countless times you have answered the call when IAS–USA and the broader HIV community asked you to help educate clinicians, scientists, policymakers, or the public. You have given your time and your voice generously, even when the demands upon both were enormous.

And thank you for continuing to serve when public service became personally costly.

The attacks, threats, distortions, and accusations directed at you cannot erase the record of what you have contributed. Generations of scientists, clinicians, advocates, public-health professionals, and—most importantly—people whose lives were saved or made longer by advances in HIV treatment and infectious-disease research are part of that record.

IAS–USA has spent more than three decades working to ensure that clinicians have access to independent, scientifically rigorous, evidence-based information. Those principles are fundamental to our institution. They are also principles you have defended throughout your career.

At this moment, we want you to know that the International Antiviral Society–USA stands with you.

We are grateful for your science.

We are grateful for your leadership.

We are grateful for your willingness to listen.

We are grateful for your courage in speaking the truth when the truth was inconvenient.

And we are profoundly grateful for your lifetime of service.

Dr Fauci, you have stood for science. You have stood for truth. And you have always stood with our community.

You are one of us, and we stand with you—100%, without hesitation.

Thank you, Dr Fauci.

With deep respect and gratitude,

International Antiviral Society–USA