Joep Lange
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Obituary 302 www.thelancet.com Vol 384 July 26, 2014 Joep Lange Pioneering HIV/AIDS researcher. Born on Sept 25, 1954, in Nieuwenhagen, the Netherlands, he died in the Malaysian Airlines MH17 crash over Ukraine on July 17, 2014, aged 59 years. It is a tragedy that HIV would indirectly play a part in the death of two of its fiercest opponents. Both died in an air crash when travelling to an HIV/AIDS meeting. In 1998 it was Jonathan Mann, head of WHO’s AIDS programme. On July 17, 2014, it was clinical virologist Joep Lange, Professor of Medicine and Head of the Department of Global Health at the University of Amsterdam and Executive Scientific Director of the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (AIGHD). Lange’s plane taking him to the 20th International AIDS Society Conference in Melbourne, Australia, was shot down over Ukraine. Other passengers heading for the conference, including Lange’s partner and AIGHD colleague, Jacqueline van Tongeren, were also killed. The conference took place under a pall of sadness: the HIV/AIDS community had suddenly been robbed of a vital leader. Lange’s colleagues describe a man unwavering in his mission to see people living with HIV in low-income countries receive the most effective available treatment. “He was shocked at the moral injustice of lifesaving treatment not being given to the millions of people in countries where most infected people were living and dying”, says Peter Reiss, Professor of Internal Medicine at the Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam. Reiss and Lange had known each other since medical school. In the early 1980s, as junior residents, they first encountered AIDS as the first Dutch patients came to their wards. “We were both interested in microbiology and infectious diseases and just happened to be in a place where the epidemic was taking off”, Reiss recalls. “Our patients were youngsters, many of them our age, and most of them died. And I was really impressed to see how caring and gentle Joep was with these patients.” Julio Montaner, another long-time colleague and friend and Professor of Medicine and Head of the Division of AIDS at Canada’s University of British Columbia, admires how “Joep was never afraid to challenge those in power and could be quite aggressive at times. He had no time for fools or for accepted dogma. But all the time, he steered unwaveringly towards his goal.” One of Lange’s achievements, Montaner says, was to bring pharmaceutical industry executives around a table and help convince them to abandon their “one firm, one drug” policy and to provide developing countries with affordable combinations of antiretroviral drugs. Lange also brought a unique creativity to his work. “He was incredibly creative”, says Reiss. “He knew how to kick-start an initiative and put ideas into practice that other people were saying would never work.” In 1996, for example, he worked with David Cooper, Director of the Kirby Institute for Infection and Immunity in Society, and Praphan Phanuphak, head of the Thai Red Cross AIDS Research Center, to set up the HIV Netherlands Australia Thailand Research Collaboration, a model for clinical HIV research in developing countries. Another of Lange’s projects was the Amsterdam-based PharmAccess Foundation, one of the first institutions to start HIV treatment programmes in sub-Saharan Africa. Lange’s pioneering research on combination antiretroviral therapy and mother-to-child transmission of HIV helped shape the field. Among the 350 papers he authored or co-authored was a 1996 study on the efficacy of “triple cocktail” drug therapy, a later study which showed that early administration of combination therapy could lower risk of transmission from an HIV-infected person to a sexual partner, and a 2003 study which showed that the risk of a baby contracting HIV from its mother could be almost eliminated if the baby received antiretroviral drugs while being breastfed. His contributions were reflected in the posts he held during his career, which included Chief of Clinical Research and Drug Development for WHO’s Global Programme on AIDS, President of the International AIDS Society in 2002–2004, and his roles at the University of Amsterdam and AIGHD. “Joep was not only a scientist but a gentleman, a scholar, a gifted intellectual. And always ready for fun and laughter”, says Montaner. Diane Havlir, Chief of the HIV/AIDS Division at San Francisco General Hospital and Professor of Medicine at UCSF, worked with Lange on many projects and remembers him as “a man of great intellect and compassion, a scientist of medicine and humanity, a crusader and visionary, a fighter for just causes, a leader who commanded, as few others could, the respect of academia, industry, and politicians, and of the communities he came in touch with in many countries.” John Maurice Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (AIGHD)/2012 Maaike Danz Published Online July 22, 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ S0140-6736(14)61052-7 See World Report page 293
Transcript of Joep Lange
Obituary
302 www.thelancet.com Vol 384 July 26, 2014
Joep LangePioneering HIV/AIDS researcher. Born on Sept 25, 1954, in Nieuwenhagen, the Netherlands, he died in the Malaysian Airlines MH17 crash over Ukraine on July 17, 2014, aged 59 years.
It is a tragedy that HIV would indirectly play a part in the death of two of its fi ercest opponents. Both died in an air crash when travelling to an HIV/AIDS meeting. In 1998 it was Jonathan Mann, head of WHO’s AIDS programme. On July 17, 2014, it was clinical virologist Joep Lange, Professor of Medicine and Head of the Department of Global Health at the University of Amsterdam and Executive Scientifi c Director of the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (AIGHD). Lange’s plane taking him to the 20th International AIDS Society Conference in Melbourne, Australia, was shot down over Ukraine. Other passengers heading for the conference, including Lange’s partner and AIGHD colleague, Jacqueline van Tongeren, were also killed. The conference took place under a pall of sadness: the HIV/AIDS community had suddenly been robbed of a vital leader.
Lange’s colleagues describe a man unwavering in his mission to see people living with HIV in low-income countries receive the most eff ective available treatment. “He was shocked at the moral injustice of lifesaving treatment not being given to the millions of people in countries where most infected people were living and dying”, says Peter Reiss, Professor of Internal Medicine at the Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam. Reiss and Lange had known each other since medical school. In the early 1980s, as junior residents, they fi rst encountered AIDS as the fi rst Dutch patients came to their wards. “We were both interested in microbiology and infectious diseases and just happened to
be in a place where the epidemic was taking off ”, Reiss recalls. “Our patients were youngsters, many of them our age, and most of them died. And I was really impressed to see how caring and gentle Joep was with these patients.”
Julio Montaner, another long-time colleague and friend and Professor of Medicine and Head of the Division of AIDS at Canada’s University of British Columbia, admires how “Joep was never afraid to challenge those in power and could be quite aggressive at times. He had no time for fools or for accepted dogma. But all the time, he steered unwaveringly towards his goal.” One of Lange’s achievements, Montaner says, was to bring pharmaceutical industry executives around a table and help convince them to abandon their “one fi rm, one drug” policy and to provide developing countries with aff ordable combinations of antiretroviral drugs.
Lange also brought a unique creativity to his work. “He was incredibly creative”, says Reiss. “He knew how to kick-start an initiative and put ideas into practice that other people were saying would never work.” In 1996, for example, he worked with David Cooper, Director of the Kirby Institute for Infection and Immunity in Society, and Praphan Phanuphak, head of the Thai Red Cross AIDS Research Center, to set up the HIV Netherlands Australia Thailand Research Collaboration, a model for clinical HIV research in developing countries. Another of Lange’s projects was the Amsterdam-based PharmAccess Foundation, one of the fi rst institutions to start HIV treatment programmes in sub-Saharan Africa.
Lange’s pioneering research on combination antiretroviral therapy and mother-to-child transmission of HIV helped shape the fi eld. Among the 350 papers he authored or co-authored was a 1996 study on the effi cacy of “triple cocktail” drug therapy, a later study which showed that early administration of combination therapy could lower risk of transmission from an HIV-infected person to a sexual partner, and a 2003 study which showed that the risk of a baby contracting HIV from its mother could be almost eliminated if the baby received antiretroviral drugs while being breastfed. His contributions were refl ected in the posts he held during his career, which included Chief of Clinical Research and Drug Development for WHO’s Global Programme on AIDS, President of the International AIDS Society in 2002–2004, and his roles at the University of Amsterdam and AIGHD.
“Joep was not only a scientist but a gentleman, a scholar, a gifted intellectual. And always ready for fun and laughter”, says Montaner. Diane Havlir, Chief of the HIV/AIDS Division at San Francisco General Hospital and Professor of Medicine at UCSF, worked with Lange on many projects and remembers him as “a man of great intellect and compassion, a scientist of medicine and humanity, a crusader and visionary, a fi ghter for just causes, a leader who commanded, as few others could, the respect of academia, industry, and politicians, and of the communities he came in touch with in many countries.”
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Published OnlineJuly 22, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61052-7
See World Report page 293
