Oh shit I hadn’t seen this until just now. The Guardian yesterday:
As many as 100 of the world’s leading HIV/Aids researchers and advocates may have been on the Malaysia Airlines flight that crashed in Ukraine, in what has been described as a “devastating” blow to efforts to tackle the virus.
The Voice of America this morning, which is the most recent I can find:
The international AIDS community is reeling from the loss of many as 100 researchers who died when Malaysia Airlines flight 17 crashed in eastern Ukraine. They were en route to an AIDS conference that is about to begin in Australia. Among the dead, a leader in AIDS research, Dr. Joep Lange.
Dr. Joup Lange changed the world’s view on who should receive medications to treat HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. He was en route to Melbourne, Australia, to participate in the International AIDS Conference which begins on Sunday.
Dr. Clifford Lane, from the National Institutes of Health, told VOA Dr. Lange’s death is a tragic blow for many people who work in AIDS treatment and research.
Jesus fucking christ it’s hard to think of anything worse – a bigger loss to human beings all over the planet, in one instant of god damn idiot stupid wasteful destructive bonehead VIOLENCE.
I feel sick. I want to wrench the clock backwards.
“He was one of the first people to see the value of doing clinical research in developing country settings at a point in time when many people thought that was not the right thing to do,” he Lane.
Lane said Dr. Lange led the effort to provide drugs to poor people with HIV in developing countries at a time when these medications were only available in the developed world.
“He was able to show quite clearly from his work that there was no reason why anyone in the world with an HIV infection shouldn’t have access to drugs that are so effective in preventing that disease, and in fact, turning it around,” he said.
And 100 others, working on AIDS research.
Sadly, this has caused all manner of conspiracy “theorists” to crawl out of their dank, dark hiding places to posit all sorts of nonsense.
* The pharmaceutical companies were behind it to stop an HIV cure from being discovered.
* Obama was behind it … because reasons (this one, really I can’t figure out)
* Putin was behind it because he wants to kill all the gays.
And on and on.
Rather than what it was. Some idiot with a missile aiming at a target that turned out to be the wrong target, killing a bunch of good people.
A big fat sad waste. Via truly senseless violence.
Apparently the death toll of AIDS researchers and activists may be much lower.
http://www.iasociety.org/Web/WebContent/File/IAS_press-statement_190714_2.pdf
From your link @3, Tim: ““The extent of our loss is hard to comprehend or express,” said President of the IAS, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi.”
Yesterday I read 7 researchers/spokespeople, but there’s no word on how many activists were on that plane. A huge loss either way.
timgueguen’s link said at that time there were six delegates on the airplane, but there could well have been more researchers, activists, and supporters on it.
I was going to say something but my thoughts aren’t printable.
The real waste was in human lives, whether the victims were Nobel Laureates, plumbers, lawyers or leading aids researchers, is irrelevant.
True in the sense of the human tragedy. But there is an extra kicker in the fact that (as the stories I saw suggested) this could actually set back progress in AIDS research. That spells more human tragedies.