On May 15, embattled Columbia University brought in Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), to address its Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. His theme wasn’t exactly medical.

“Sadly,” Dr. Fauci explained, “elements of our society are driven by a cacophony of falsehoods, lies, and conspiracy theories that get repeated often enough that after a while, they stand largely unchallenged, ominously leading to an insidious acceptance of what I call ‘the normalization of untruth’ … And we as much or more than anyone else need to push back on these distortions of truth and reality.”

The emeritus NIAID boss left out a few key points. Fauci repeatedly lied about funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), and the very day of Fauci’s address, former NIH acting director Lawrence Tabak testified that NIAID did indeed fund such research at the WIV. That lab, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, is the most likely origin of the COVID virus, which Fauci claimed was a naturally occurring virus originating in the wild. Fauci’s claim is pure speculation—not science, which relies on measurement, testing, and replication. Yet Fauci has likewise claimed to represent science itself.

Fauci’s Columbia speech recycled comments from a lecture for McGill University in 2021.

“If ever you could imagine the worst possible environment into which a global pandemic emerges,” Fauci contended in that 2021 lecture, it “would be in an environment of anti-science, complete normalization of lies, complete normalization of equating the true scientific data with complete nonsense. This is something that is so disturbing to me as a physician, as a scientist and as a public health person.” The NIAID boss thus supplied more reasons that he was a poor choice to address medical students.

In 1966, Fauci earned a medical degree at Cornell, but in 1968 he took a cushy “yellow beret” job with the National Institutes of Health (NIH). If he ever practiced medicine, it was only for a short time. Dr. Fauci’s bio showed no advanced degrees in molecular biology or biochemistry, yet in 1984 he became head of NIAID. Kary Mullis, who earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from UC Berkeley and won a Nobel Prize for invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), thought Fauci unqualified for the NIAID job.

“This man thinks you can take a blood sample and stick it in an electron microscope and if it’s got a virus in there, you will know it,” Mullis said. “He doesn’t understand electron microscopy and he doesn’t understand medicine. He should not be in a position like he’s in.”

But he was a position of power, with serious consequences for those suffering from AIDS. Fauci’s recommended treatment was AZT, also known as azidothymidine and Zidovudine, a highly toxic drug that failed to prevent or cure AIDS. Fauci branded his critics “AIDS deniers,” a tactic he would repeat during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of debating the scientists of the Great Barrington Declaration, most if not all more qualified than himself, Fauci branded them fringe epidemiologists.

Fauci was eager to lock down the country but it’s hard to find evidence that he treated a single COVID patient. In that respect the NIAID boss is hardly alone.

Current Centers for Disease Control (CDC) director Mandy Cohen earned a medical degree from Yale, trained in internal medicine, and opted for a career in bureaucracy. Her predecessor, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, earned a medical degree from Johns Hopkins, completed a residency, and opted for a career as an academic and bureaucrat with the CDC.

Consider also the CDC’s first spokesperson on the COVID pandemic, Dr. Nancy Messonnier. Messonnier finished medical school in 1992 and in 1995 joined the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service. Tasked to prevent plagues from arriving stateside, the intrepid EIS disease detectives failed to prevent the COVID virus from arriving stateside and spreading across the country.

In effect, the medical degrees of Messonnier, Walensky, Cohen, and Fauci amount to bureaucratic credentials, a M.D. in the style of an Ed.D. If the Columbia students seek to become practicing physicians and surgeons, none of these bureaucrats ought to be their models. If they want to know what Fauci is really all about, they can refer to his 2021 speech for McGill University.

I think what people have to appreciate is that indeed, you do have personal liberties for yourself and you should be in control of that,” Fauci said. “But you are a member of society, and as a member of society—reaping all the benefits of being a member of society—you have a responsibility to society. And I think each of us, particularly in the context of a pandemic that’s killing millions of people, you have got to look at it and say there comes a time when you do have to give up what you consider your individual right of making your own decision, for the greater good of society. (emphasis added)

The totalitarian ethos, plus Dr. Anthony Fauci, equals white coat supremacy. As the people know by now, white-coat supremacy is incompatible with constitutional government, the rule of law, and common sense. The time is long past to hold Fauci accountable.