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A
prominent AIDS researcher and five others headed to a medical meeting
in Australia were confirmed killed in the crash of a Malaysia Airlines
flight, and more who planned to attend the event may be among the dead.
Bloomberg News
Flight 17 Crash Casts Shadow Over Melbourne AIDS Meeting
A prominent AIDS researcher and five
others headed to a medical meeting in Australia were confirmed
killed in the crash of a Malaysia Airlines flight, and more who
planned to attend the event may be among the dead.
Former International AIDS Society President Joep Lange and
his partner, Jacqueline van Tongeren, were among the dead. Also
on board were World Health Organization spokesman Glenn Thomas,
lobbyist Pim de Kuijer and program manager Martine de Schutter
from the Netherlands AIDS Fund. They were among 298 on flight
MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it crashed in eastern
Ukraine, according to statements from their organizations. The plane was hit by a missile fired from rebel-held territory where pro-Russia separatists oppose the government, President Barack Obama said at the White House yesterday. Malaysia Airlines, which today released the latest passenger nationalities on the flight, said it will publish the passenger manifest after it has contacted relatives of those killed.
“The mood around is pretty somber,” Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC: Global Advocacy for AIDS Prevention, said by e-mail from Melbourne. “But the meeting and the overall conference will undoubtedly move forward, which is how Joep, I think, would have done it when he was IAS president, as he was certainly one to put mission ahead of self.”
Lucie van Mens from the The Female Health Co. (FHCO:US) was also killed, the Global Network of People Living With HIV said in a statement on July 17 from which it later removed names. Chicago-based Female Health Co. didn’t return calls requesting comment.
‘Senseless Tragedy’
“Our colleagues were traveling because of their dedication to bringing an end to AIDS,” Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, president of the International AIDS Society, told reporters in Melbourne today. “We will honor their commitment and keep them in our hearts as we begin our program on Sunday.”While there were reports that as many as 100 researchers and activists may have been killed, including in comments by Obama at the White House, Chris Beyrer, IAS’s president-elect said by e-mail only the six are confirmed.
Barré-Sinoussi said today that while there may be a few more casualties, they won’t be equal to the numbers reported.
Condolence books will be available at the conference, which starts tomorrow, and IAS is planning a moment of remembrance, she said. Representatives of the organizations affected by the loss of colleagues will also be on stage tomorrow, she said.
‘He Was Right’
“Perhaps more than any single person in HIV research, Lange rallied support for triple antiretroviral therapy as the only way to move forward,” IAS said in a statement. “Lange urged that only an array of drugs with different mechanisms could effectively combat the virus. He was right.”Lange was the head of global health at the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam. His work focused on the epidemic in Africa, including getting people with HIV onto antiretroviral drugs more quickly, and improving access to drugs on the continent.
He worked on HIV for three decades and was the author of more than 350 scientific papers. Lange was also chief of clinical research and drug development at WHO’s Global Program on AIDS from 1992 to 1995, and IAS president from 2002 to 2004.
“He was an icon,” said Albert Osterhaus, a virologist at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who said he had known Lange for about 30 years and had collaborated with him in the past. “This is a terrible thing, very difficult.”
‘Most Prominent’
Lange was “one of the first and one of the most prominent” researchers and policy advocates on AIDS, said Clifford Lane, deputy director for clinical research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.“It’s incredibly sad and a tragic blow. This is someone who always spoke his mind in a way that was always seeking to make a positive change,” Lane said. “He wasn’t bashful about criticizing policies that needed to be criticized.”
Lange helped push for access to life-saving antiretroviral treatments for people in developing countries, Lane said. He also built a large treatment and research network in Thailand.
Lane said he didn’t have any information on the number of AIDS researchers killed beyond the names already reported.
The AIDS world has “lost a giant” with Lange’s death, said Barré-Sinoussi, who was awarded a Nobel prize in 2008 for her co-discovery of the virus that causes AIDS. “I have no words really to express my sadness,” she told reporters.
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