Here’s the story of one Canadian doctor who has spent decades helping the medical world turn the tide on the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
In 1981, AIDS was first recognized as a new disease. Caused by the HIV virus, it first presented as a strange kind of pneumonia. Doctors soon realized that although the pneumonia was treatable, the destruction of the immune systems of AIDS patients meant that new complications were always waiting. Treating the symptoms alone only extended lives by weeks or months. The world watched as AIDS grew to a global pandemic.
Soon, researchers turned to treating the virus itself, instead of just the symptoms it caused. Controlling the HIV virus not only brought AIDS symptoms under control, but also drastically reduced its transmission. This new paradigm of treatment as prevention has reduced the global AIDS pandemic to a rare occurrence, and revolutionized the way we approach infectious diseases.