As a young medical student, I admired Tony Fauci. I bought and read Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, a vital textbook that Fauci co-edited. In reading his new memoir, On Call, I remembered why I admired him. His concern about his patients' plights, especially HIV patients, comes through clearly.

Unfortunately, Fauci's memoir omits vital details about his failures as an administrator, an adviser to politicians, and a key figure in America's public health response to infectious disease threats over the past 40 years. His life story is a Greek tragedy. Fauci's evident intelligence and diligence are why the country and the world expected so much of him, but his hubris caused his failure as a public servant.

It is impossible to read Fauci's memoir and not believe he was genuinely moved by the plight of AIDS patients. Since the first time he learned of the illness from a puzzling and alarming case report, his laudable ambition has been to conquer the disease with drugs and vaccines, cure every patient, and wipe the syndrome from the face of the earth. He is both sincere and correct when he writes that "history will judge us harshly if we don't end HIV.