The cure for AIDS shot down with MH17?

The wreckage (Reuters)

A picture taken on July 14, 2003 in Paris, shows Dutchman and leading AIDS researcher Joep Lange during a conference on the matter.The world AIDS community was in mourning on July 18, 2014 with as many as 100 passengers reportedly on a crashed Malaysia Airlines plane heading to Australia for a global conference on the epidemic. Flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, which US officials believe was hit by a surface-to-air missile over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board, was due to connect with another flight to Melbourne. AFP

Published Saturday, July 19, 2014

By Agencies

Latest update: A global AIDS summit was in shock Saturday at the loss of colleagues in the Malaysia Airlines disaster over Ukraine, but spirits were lifted when the number who died was put at six, far fewer than feared.

A global AIDS summit was in shock Saturday at the loss of colleagues in the Malaysia Airlines disaster over Ukraine, but delegates vowed to carry on their vital work in honour of those who died.

As many as 100 passengers on the plane were reportedly en route to the 20th International AIDS Conference in Melbourne when it went down in a rebel-held part of the country on Thursday, killing all 298 on board.

The sense of loss was palpable as attendees gathered at the Melbourne Convention Centre on the eve of the high-powered meeting, the largest of its kind in the world.

"We are still in a state of shock," Nobel prize winner and International AIDS Society president Francoise Barre-Sinoussi told AFP.
Among those who died was Dutchman Joep Lange, a pioneer of cheap anti-retrovirals for the poor and a prominent AIDS researcher who had been involved in HIV research and treatment since 1983.

"Joep was not only a great researcher, a great champion of the fight against HIV for many years, he was also a wonderful human being," Barre-Sinoussi told a cure symposium ahead of the five-day summit starting Sunday.

"He was firmly believing that a cure for HIV was possible, as we all do, and was one of the first supporters of the idea of integrating social science with the search for a cure.

"I am convinced that he, like the other members of the HIV community that were in that plane, would have encouraged us to go on. Our presence today is certainly the best tribute we can pay."

Officials from the PharmAccess Foundation, which Lange launched in 2000 to facilitate access to treatment for HIV and AIDS patients across Africa, said his death was "a massive loss".

Lange's "dedication to the treatment of HIV/AIDS and global health in general has been groundbreaking," PharmAccess managing director Onno Schellekens said in a statement.

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