World Known HIV Scientist Lost in Ukraine Down Plane
As an undergraduate research intern at then-SmithKline & French Laboratories, I recall my advisor and other lab directors trying to work out their various flights to England to visit the company’s Welwyn Garden City operations. The issue at hand was the company’s limitation that no more than two principal investigators could travel on the same flight, a precaution to preserve R&D progress in the event of a tragedy.
We learned late last night that such concerns may be eclipsed manifold by the tragic news equivalent to losing hundreds of years of broad expertise in combatting HIV/AIDS.
Many HIV/AIDS researchers, officials, and activists – perhaps scores – had been traveling on Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 en route to the 20th anniversary AIDS 2014 conference in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
The MH17 Boeing 777 aircraft was apparently shot down yesterday over Ukraine, perhaps accidentally, killing all 298 passengers and crew.
So many stories of individual and family tragedies are already permeating the press and internet, people who are all loved and celebrated. But the loss of those dedicated to combatting HIV/AIDS seems to have intensified the sadness.
WHO
Glenn Thomas of the WHO died on board flight MH17.
Rick Morton of The Australian wrote yesterday that, “It is believed that delegates to the 20th International AIDS Conference, due to begin on Sunday, will be informed today that 108 of their colleagues and family members died on MH17.”
(Incoming International AIDS Society (IAS) president Chris Beyer told theWashington Post this hour that, “the actual number may be much smaller,” as conference organizers can only confirm seven people at this time.)
While we await confirmation of the magnitude of this loss, the premature death of any one individual among the anticipated 14,000 attendees is a blow for the international effort to reduce human suffering from HIV/AIDS.
Current IAS President, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi from Institute Pasteur, appeared in a press conference in Canberra yesterday, now posted at The Australian. Barré-Sinoussi shared half of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Luc Montagnier for the discovery of the retrovirus that causes AIDS. (The other half of that prize went to Harald zur Hausen, the German scientist whose group showed that human papillomavirus causes cervical cancer, enabling development of HPV vaccines.)
Before the Australian National Press Club, Barré-Sinoussi reflected solemnly,
“I apologize if I don’t feel so well. On that plane, it was probably many passengers coming to the AIDS Conference in Melbourne. It will be a great loss for the HIV/AIDS community including, if it is confirmed, our colleague Joep Lange (pronounced yoop lahn-guh) and collaborator Jacquile [Jacqueline van Tongeren, Lange's partner and mother of their five children] I had the privilege myself to work with them in the past. Joep was a wonderful person and a great professional. But more than that, a wonderful human being.”
Lange had preceded Barré-Sinoussi as IAS president.
The Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach confirmed in a call to Lange’s Amsterdam office that the AIDS researcher had indeed perished in the crash. Harvard’s Daniel R. Kuritzkes, M.D., described Lange as an “extraordinary leader, scientist, and humanitarian,” who, “fought ceaselessly for the dignity of all HIV-infected persons throughout the world.”
Hosts and compatriots in mourning
Australia appears to have lost 28 citizens among the 298 who perished on MH17, including 10 passengers from the state of Victoria. So, the capital city of Melbourne is not only the host city for those who mourn their international colleagues, but also a compatriot.
Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Robert Doyle, wrote Friday evening on Twitter,
I’m hesitant to repeat any other social media reports of AIDS 2014 delegates lost on the flight pending release of the passenger manifest by Malaysian Airlines. As of midnight Friday Malaysian time, only the names of the pilot and crew had been released.
But in addition to Drs. Lange and van Tongeren, Nature’s Declan Butler and Katia Moskvitch have confirmed the deaths of four other prominent meeting delegates:
• Glenn Thomas, media relations coordinator at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.
• Lucie van Mens, director of programme development and support for the Female Health Company.
• Martine de Schutter, Aids Fonds.
• Pim de Kuijer, writer, political activist, AIDS campaigner, parliamentary lobbyist for STOP AIDS NOW!
• Lucie van Mens, director of programme development and support for the Female Health Company.
• Martine de Schutter, Aids Fonds.
• Pim de Kuijer, writer, political activist, AIDS campaigner, parliamentary lobbyist for STOP AIDS NOW!
The ultimate toll might very well have been higher for another reason: Emirates Airlines been selected by the IAS as the official carrier for the conference. It’s conceivable that some travelers took advantage of the meeting discounts for their air travel.
Infectious diseases journalist Maryn McKenna remarked last night that the crash brought back memories of the 1998 Swissair Flight 111 crash and loss of WHO director of global AIDS research, Jonathan Mann, M.D., and his wife and AIDS researcher, Mary Lou Clements-Mann. Flight 111 crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia en route to Geneva from New York’s JFK Airport.
Eerily, Irving Sigal, Merck’s then director of molecular biology and leader of the team developing their HIV protease inhibitor, Crixivan (indinavir), perished in the Pan Am Flight 131 flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
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