On February 17, 2021, the University of Montana's Mansfield Center hosted Dr. Anthony Fauci for the2021 Mansfield Lecture, presenting a dialogue between the preeminent American public health figure and several Montanans, including moderator Rob Saldin of the Mansfield Center. Listen to Dr. Fauci's take on Covid-19, vaccine distribution and vaccine hesitancy in Montana, lessons to be learned from this pandemic, and how and when we'll recognize that we've returned to a version of "normal."
Following the discussion with Fauci, Dr. Marshall Bloom, Associate Director for Science Management for Rocky Mountain Laboratories, revisited the origins of Rocky Mountain Labs, and the international public health role this NIH campus serves in researching emerging infectious disease threats.
Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, where he oversees an extensive research portfolio focused on infectious and immune-mediated diseases. As the long-time chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation, Dr. Fauci has made many seminal contributions in basic and clinical research and is one of the world’s most-cited biomedical scientists. He was one of the principal architects of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has saved millions of lives throughout the developing world.
Dr. Marshall Bloom, Associate Director for Science Management for Rocky Mountain Laboratories, National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health: Dr. Bloom received his M.D. in 1971 from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MI, and then joined the Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML) of NIAID in 1972 as a research associate. From 1975 to 1977, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the NIAID Laboratory of the Biology of Viruses on the NIH campus in Bethesda, MD. He returned to RML as a tenured investigator in 1977 and was a charter member of the Laboratory of Persistent Viral Diseases. He is a world expert in the molecular biology and pathogenesis of parvoviruses and is considered an authority in biocontainment. In 2004, Dr. Bloom’s research group changed its focus to the pathogenesis of tickborne flaviviruses. In 2002, Dr. Bloom was appointed associate director for RML in NIAID’s Division of Intramural Research, and among his duties have been program supervision of the permitting, construction, and staffing of NIAID's first biosafety level-4 facility. In 2008, Dr. Bloom was named associate director for science management for RML in NIAID’s Division of Intramural Research. He has also served as acting chief of the NIAID new Laboratory of Virology and acting chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Human Bacterial Pathogenesis.
Robert Saldin is the Director of the Mansfield Center's Ethics and Public Affairs Program and a Professor of Political Science. Dr. Saldin has a background in health and health policy, as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at Harvard University from 2010-2012; author of “When Bad Policy Makes Good Politics: Running the Numbers on Health Reform”; and professor of a course on health policy.
His most recent book is Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites (Oxford University Press, 2020), co-authored with Steven Teles. His scholarly articles have appeared in outlets such as The Journal of Politics, Political Science Quarterly, Journal of Policy History, Political Research Quarterly, and Presidential Studies Quarterly. He has also written extensively for the popular press, including The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and National Affairs. Previously, he was the Patrick Henry Scholar at Johns Hopkins University, a Fellow at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, and a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies.
(Broadcast: Documentary Special, 2/28/21. Listen on the radio Sundays, 4 p.m.)
