Hiv Frontlines

"It was a very eerie, depressing, anxiety-provoking period," recalls Anthony Fauci, M.D. "The very darkest years of my professional career." Dr. Fauci is recounting the early 1980s, when, as an infectious disease doc working for the U.S. National Institutes of Health in Maryland, he watched helplessly as people showed up at his hospital with a mysterious -- and almost always fatal -- illness. That illness, of course, was AIDS. From the very beginning of the pandemic, Dr. Fauci has played a critical role in helping doctors and researchers better understand HIV disease. In the latest edition of our HIV Frontlines podcast series, Dr. Fauci looks back over more than 25 years spent fighting HIV.