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AIDS: 30 Years Later
Sunday, June 5, marked 30 years since the first U.S. AIDS cases were documented in a report by the Centers for Disease Control. HIV co-discoverer Dr. Jay Levy is a SIPA International Fellow. Speaking at SIPA Alumni Day in 2010, Dr. Levy said HIV has probably been around for much longer, perhaps for thousands of years, in remote regions of the world.
“While some researchers believe HIV came from primates about 100 years ago, I think the virus has been in Africa far longer,” Dr. Levy told the group. “In the remote African village, the virus was self-contained; it never reached the threshold of prevalence to pose a major problem to the human population.”
Today, HIV is no longer a death sentence. Thanks to tests that detect HIV early and a range of drugs, millions of people are living with the condition. And this week, news reports detailed the case of the so-called “Berlin patient,” an HIV American who also suffered from leukemia. Medical journals report that the virus was eliminated from his body by a stem cell transplant from a donor who was immune to HIV.
The “Berlin patient” was moved to San Francisco, where Dr. Levy is studying the apparent “natural immunity.” He told CBS News: "If you're able to take the white cells from someone and manipulate them so they're no longer infectable by HIV, and those white cells become the whole immune system of that individual, you've got essentially what we call a functional cure."
Dr. Levy told SIPA alumni that the drive for an AIDS cure is partly about science and partly about money. Treating HIV is becoming unaffordable and unsustainable.
“Economically … HIV, malaria, and TB now account for one-third to one-half of a healthy year’s loss in resource-limited countries,” he said. "They threaten to reverse decades of development and rob entire generations of the future. Life expectancy rose in Botswana to 65 years by 1985. But when HIV entered the country in the 1980’s, it was reduced back to the 1930’s – or 40 years of age.”
Read Dr. Levy’s full remarks. 
Alex Burnett, June 6, 2011