Don Francis

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Donald Pinkston "Don" Francis (born October 24, 1942 ) is an American epidemiologist who played a decisive role in the discovery and education of the AIDS disease.

Don Francis' Achievement in the Aids Discovery

Don Francis recognized the dramatic health threat posed by AIDS very early on and, despite opposition, has promoted public awareness of it. He also sent crucial samples from infected patients to the real discoverer of the HI virus, Luc Montagnier , in Paris, making Montagnier's US adversary Robert Gallo an enemy and putting his own career at risk . The dispute between the two opponents took place on several levels, among other things Gallo sparked a dispute over the patent rights of an antibody search test for the HI virus developed in the mid-1980s. Don Francis' visionary abilities, which are also based on his previous experience with the Ebola virus epidemic in Africa, can only be understood against the background of the history of the discovery of AIDS.

The first harbingers of AIDS were registered in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) when an employee responsible for dispensing medication (Sandra Ford) registered a sudden increase in consumption of a reserve antibiotic for Pneumocystis carinii - pneumonia , which was only available at the CDC at the time , namely pentamidine . This led to the first written mention of one of the AIDS symptoms: Michael Gottlieb stated on June 5, 1981 in the CDC's "Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report" an increased number of cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. The mixture of ignorance and yet gloomy premonition is reflected in an exemplary statement by Sandra Ford in Newsweek that was later published: “A doctor was treating a gay man in his 20s who had pneumonia. Two weeks later, he called to ask for a refill of a rare drug that I handled. This was unusual - nobody ever asked for a refill. Patients usually were cured in one 10-day treatment or they died. "

On July 3, 1981, another article reported the outbreak of 8 cases of Kaposi's sarcoma among young homosexual men in New York City , which was extremely unusual as the condition usually only affects the elderly. Through extensive detective work and field research with interviews with those affected, 40 cases of Kaposi's sarcoma could be traced back to contact with a person in 1982 (“patient zero”), so that the transmission through sexual intercourse could be proven. Don Francis played a decisive role in this. Due to public ignorance and the politically sensitive connection of the disease with the gay scene, but also due to the long incubation period after the infection, the seriousness of the situation was recognized far too late, so that the epidemic could spread unhindered and now also among blood recipients, Heterosexual and hemophilic . Don Francis tried - mostly in vain - to get more research funding from the US government at this early stage.

In the further course of research into AIDS, Robert Gallo was asked for help; he initially postulated a new human T-cell leukemia virus as the cause of AIDS ("HTLV-III"); his competitor Luc Montagnier in Paris, on the other hand, recognized that it had to be a new type of virus (Montagnier initially called the virus "LAV" = lymphadenopathy-associated virus). Don Francis sent Luc Montagnier urgently needed reference samples to Paris without informing Gallo. He also mediated the dispute between Gallo and Montagnier and the HIV discovery.

In a detailed study by researchers led by Michael Worobey from the University of Arizona in Tucson, the history of the spread of the HI virus in the USA was recently reconstructed. Accordingly, the virus came to New York around 1970, they write in the magazine "Nature". Using the mutation rates, the researchers calculate that a precursor of the virus type circulated in the Caribbean around 1967 (1963 to 1970). According to this, HIV reached the USA around 1971 (1969 to 1973). According to calculations, the number of infected people there doubled initially about every ten months. For details see:

Don Francis today

While Don Francis, as a tired idealist in government service, left the civil service in 1992 frustrated in order to develop a vaccine against AIDS in the private sector and ultimately founded Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases in 2008, Luc Montagnier received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2008 for the discovery of the HI virus . Robert Gallo, who was accused of dishonorable behavior or misleading by an investigative commission set up specifically for the case, did not receive a Nobel Prize, but a number of other well-known prizes, e.g. B. the Dan David Prize , among other things for the discovery of human retroviruses such as HTLV I and II .

Film adaptation of Don Francis' scientific achievement

In the 1994 HBO-produced film ... and life goes on , which impressively reconstructs the discovery of AIDS and the causal HI virus , Don Francis played a decisive role in it and his fight against the ignorance and taboo of the then Reagan administration and the Blood donation services in the field of tension of the flourishing gay movement presented in great detail. The film with many biographical details from Don Francis' fight against AIDS is based on the book of the same name by Randy Shilts , a journalist for the " San Francisco Chronicle ". In the book "Blood" by Douglas Starr ( Los Angeles Times Book Prize 1998) the history of the discovery of AIDS is presented comprehensively and placed in a historical context about blood.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ SPIEGEL ONLINE, Hamburg Germany: acquittal for "patient zero": How AIDS really got to the USA. In: SPIEGEL ONLINE. Retrieved October 27, 2016 .
  2. ^ History of Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases on their official website. Retrieved May 30, 2017.
  3. ↑ Zeit.de
personal data
SURNAME Francis, Don
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Francis, Donald Pinkston (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American epidemiologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 24, 1942