Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1996. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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San Francisco Examiner - Monday, December 23, 1996
Gregory Lewis, Examiner Staff
"I almost fell out of my chair when I heard the news," said Jeff Getty, an AIDS patient from Oakland who has seen clinical improvement following his radiation therapy and baboon-cell transplant. "I thought it was great.
"For people like me, AIDS is the most important thing we're dealing with. It's life and death. For an AIDS scientist to be named Man of the Year really is encouraging. Time magazine is recognizing that the lives of 1 million people have been changed in this country."
Ho, a 44-year-old virologist and professor at Rockefeller University in New York, is the scientific director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center.
His triple-drug therapy, the use of several anti-viral drugs to combat the AIDS-causing HIV virus, appears to slow the virus in patients in the early stages of infection.
Time said in its Dec. 30 issue that Ho has fundamentally changed the approach to combating AIDS through his development of a triple-drug "cocktail" that appears to slow the HIV virus in early stages of infection.
Brenda Lein of Project Inform said Ho's work "had pushed the bounds of what we've learned (about HIV). He didn't discover protease inhibitors, but the way he's been applying them has been novel and I think he's very deserving."
Lein said it has yet to be determined if Ho's using a cocktail of anti-viral drugs is groundbreaking, but he's "pushing the frontier . . . moving in the right direction."
While pleased at Ho's recognition, Getty said Ho was one of many researchers pioneering work against the virus.
"I don't worship David Ho. I don't see him as some God-like scientist or some genius. He was one of many," said Getty. "He got it into print first. He wrote the paper that's the turning point. You can slow this virus down. It was suspected by others. But Ho put his finger on it."
Matthew Sharp of ACT UP Golden Gate said, "It's the first time anybody having anything to do with AIDS has been named Man of the Year. In light of all the breakthroughs in the last year, it couldn't have gone to a more deserving person. It will be good for middle America to pick up their copy of Time magazine and learn a little bit about where we are in terms of AIDS and AIDS care."
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