BOOK REVIEW

The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert Kennedy Jr.

By Alec Pruchnicki, M.D.

This is the worst book I have ever read in my life, and at 76 I have read a lot of books. It is not possible to cover everything in a book of over 400 pages with thousands of references, but I will try and cover the major issues and the sadness about what RFK Jr. could have done before he went down the conspiracy pathway.

Let us start with Kennedy’s obsession with Dr. Anthony Fauci. Like Mojo Nixon’s description of Elvis (look it up, it’s funny), Fauci is everywhere according to Kennedy. With the assistance of Bill Gate’s billions of dollars, these two people have managed to control the multi-trillion-dollar medical field. If vaccines are advocated it is from Fauci. If alternative views from anti-vaxxers, HIV deniers and others are censored, it is from Fauci. If grants are denied, publications rejected, people fired anywhere in the world of medicine, it is because of Fauci and his iron-clad control. If Big Pharma is making billions from vaccines, it is because Fauci helped them. Fauci’s every step up in the field of public service is a Machiavellian grab of power and money. This is despite the fact that if you want to make money in medicine, you do not go into government public service, but you go into the private sector.

Anthony Fauci has just retired as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He was not the head of NIH, although he had been offered the position and rejected it. He didn’t control the FDA where medication approval scandals have been occurring for decades. And, most importantly, he was not a completely free agent but had to answer to others. The daily press conferences by President Trump with Drs. Fauci and Brix should have made this clear. Trump, and to a lesser extent Biden, were simply powerless or ignorant when confronted with the omnipotence or omniscience of Fauci.

The presidents’ roles were not the only thing ignored by this book. Big Pharma, and patient advocacy groups do lots of lobbying to Congress, which actually controls the FDA and the NIH through the power of the purse. If Big Pharma has managed to makes billions from the pharma/vaccine industrial complex, it did not need Fauci, or even Gates to do it. Abuses by pharmaceutical companies, especially in the area of over-pricing and monopolization, have been documented for decades by progressives in the field of medicine long before Kennedy came along.

Other weakness of this book are the medical statements of “fact” which are just plain wrong. Kennedy states that the lock-down and isolation used to combat Covid was unprecedented, but this has always been the first step in combating plagues since at least the Black Death (see WestView News, Jan. 2023, “The Story of Four Plagues”). He states that diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis in children were rare before vaccines were introduced, but this is factually wrong. HIV deniers are quoted as claiming that when a virus infects a person it must be expressed with disease symptoms. Numerous diseases can be in a “carrier” or “colonized” state and never give symptoms. This is seen in herpes, hepatitis, dormant childhood diseases like measles and chicken pox, MRSA and C. difficile infections, and countless others. The case of Typhoid Mary around 1900 made this point.

So much more was left out of this book. Well publicized outbreaks of measles from Disneyland in 2014-15 and in Samoa in 2019 (where many deaths occurred) called into question the entire anti-vax movement but were ignored here. At the beginning of the Covid pandemic, the medical journals were flooded with articles about the disease including ineffective or dangerous treatments like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine (advocated by Fauci’s boss President Trump). But Kennedy spends chapters on these treatments without mentioning contradictory articles from mainline medical journals. Despite thousands of references there is no index in the printed version. Maybe in the e-book it’s easier to find items, but I’m a Boomer and I read paper books.

Since the start of Covid in early 2020 I have seen tens of thousands of medications ordered by thousands of doctors and I have never seen one single ivermectin prescription ordered to treat Covid.

Kennedy is not obligated to address arguments for the other side. He knows how to write like a lawyer and say something without actually saying it in a way that can make him accountable if he’s wrong. The use of qualifiers (“probably, maybe, reportedly”) can give every statement a loophole if it’s proven wrong. He also makes some of his statements by citing others. Kary Mullis and Peter McCullough are outstanding scientists in the field of basic research but I don’t know if either one has ever taken care of a patient where a simple mistake can kill someone. And both have been controversial deniers in the medical field despite their reputations in basic science, including Mullis’ Nobel Prize. Celia Farber, a journalist, is also frequently quoted. The Children’s Health Defense, previously headed by Kennedy, is also an advocate for vaccine denial. By quoting all of these again and again, Kennedy can avoid responsibility.

After reading this book I felt real sadness at an opportunity missed. Kennedy can identify important issues and take the progressive side of the debate. For example, I’ve never read a bad word about his advocacy for Hudson River environmental issues.

His identification of Big Pharma as a purveyor of greed, if not outright crime, could have been important coming from someone with his training, experience, and notoriety. But, no. The evil genius of Fauci and Gates is the real source of our problems according to him. Sad.