Stopping this scourge
December 1, 2002 9:45 AM   Subscribe

Dr. Donald Francis He was portrayed by Mathew Modine in the classic HBO film And the Band Played On, which told the story of how he discovered the AIDS virus 20 years ago. Earlier in his career he was a key member of the team that wiped out Smallpox (although he couldn't argue a few governments from keeping samples on ice just in case) and the team that figured out how to contain outbreaks of the flesh eating Ebola virus--that was essentially him, though not his personality, that Dustin Hoffman played in Outbreak. Now he's the president and chief scientist of Vaxgen, a company that expects to receive positive result from its Phase III human clinical trials of AIDSVAX shortly after New Year's. If the results are as expected, AIDSVAX will be the first AIDS vaccine to go into production.

Like any other major issue in our age of delusions and self-deceptions, there are doubters and paranoids and conspiracy theorists too. Here is a neat little example of all three bundled up in one, from a publication titled The Aids Mirage: Donald Francis invents a viral epidemic. All the stop energy embodied by such efforts are really sad.
posted by billsaysthis (0 comments total)
 

« Older Cure for AIDS   |   Can Poetry Matter ? - Part 3 Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments