HIV and ID Observations

At last year’s IDWeek — the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America — a group of us veterans in the HIV/ID world wrapped up a busy day of symposia, abstracts, and posters with a lively dinner in Los Angeles.

What do I mean by veterans? If you started your ID training before effective HIV therapy, you qualify: Joe, Trip, Judy, Joel, Jeanne (!!!), me — well, here’s the email I sent after the dinner:

Hi All,

What a fun night! Despite the adventure of getting there in LA crazy traffic (thank you Judy for the lift and your bravery driving in such madness), and the deafening restaurant noise which made us all need to shout, it was a great meal. I awoke today feeling very grateful for having such smart, interesting, and funny long-term colleagues and friends, and optimistic about what’s to come with Jeanne’s exciting new position.

Thanks also to Joel for galvanizing this gathering of us ID docs who did our fellowships in the late 1980s/early 1990s, which was more than 3 decades ago, but who’s counting.

Paul

So what’s the ‘!!!’ doing after Jeanne’s name up there in the second paragraph? That, of course, referred to Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, who had recently been named Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a position she took over from long-time head Tony Fauci. Even though I’ve known Jeanne for years, last year I was a bit star-struck and flattered that she chose to dine with us.

(Maybe she chose us because we all share her love for dogs. Yep, it was that!)

Jeanne spoke about NIAID, the directions she wanted to take it, the challenges our country faced, and just radiated the kind of positive energy that we’d want in this important position. Going from Chief of ID at the University of Alabama to this NIAID head position seemed the right next career step for such a natural born leader. Everything she said exuded optimism, and promise.

Fast forward a year — IDWeek again, this time in Atlanta. You could not imagine a more dispiriting turn of affairs. Right there, in the home city of the CDC, we heard about their laid-off staff and furloughed workers. Barely any CDC officers attended an ID meeting in their hometown — how’s that for irony? Those that did — to showcase their research or to teach us — did so on their own dime, as they’re certainly not receiving a salary or stipend from the organization that they supported for years, sometimes decades.

And what about Jeanne Marrazzo? What’s happened to her?

As has been widely reported, in the year since our dinner she went from celebrated leader to embattled critic. After raising alarms about what she viewed as the politicization of NIAID’s grant process and a growing hostility toward vaccine research, she was placed on administrative leave earlier this year. In September, she and vaccine researcher Dr. Kathleen Neuzil filed a whistleblower complaint alleging retaliation for those concerns. A few weeks later, she was fired — no reason given — but how can we see it as anything other than the silencing of a scientist who spoke up?

(Shared with permission.)

So what a year. From a gleeful dinner in Los Angeles to the sober conference in Atlanta. The same faces, the same field, but the atmosphere flipped upside down by the results of the November election. Last year the energy was forward-looking with a newly minted NIAID director, confident colleagues, and the sense that we were part of something steadily advancing. This year: layoffs, sidelined personnel, “RIFs” — everyone had a story about a grant cancelled, a program blitzed, an international project put on indefinite hold.

And yet — I saw Jeanne at the meeting, and am delighted to say that she’s still bursting with energy and a desire to do something good in the world of Infectious Diseases. Likening herself to a border collie now confined to the house — restless, needing to get out and accomplish some tasks! — she’s looking at numerous options for deploying her various talents. And what a quintessentially on-brand metaphor for herself.

Wherever she ends up will be the better for it, I’m sure of that.

For the rest of us, the times certainly have changed since last October, but the community still felt strong. No, IDWeek 2025 didn’t have the optimistic buzz of last year’s meeting, but nearly everyone I met this year carried the same conviction — that good clinical care, good research, good teaching, and above all, good people, still matter.

Matter a lot.

Now, for that bonus video I promised …