[ad_1]
Timothy Ray Brown, the first person to be cured of HIV, died Tuesday of cancer. He was 54 years old.
Brown, known as “the patient from Berlin,” was cured of HIV when he underwent a bone marrow transplant in 2007 to treat leukemia, which he had separately. The donor had a genetic mutation called “CCR-delta 32” that made him resistant to HIV to a point of near immunity. When Brown received the transplant, that genetic resistance was passed on to him.
The discovery was announced at an AIDS conference in 2008 and celebrated as a cure. Brown remained anonymous for two years, known only as “the Berlin patient” by the city where he was treated, but identified himself in 2010.
He wrote about his decision to leave anonymity in a 2015 trial published in the medical journal AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses.
“I went from being the ‘Berlin Patient’ to using my real name, Timothy Ray Brown,” he wrote. “I didn’t want to be the only person in the world to be cured of HIV; I wanted other HIV + patients to join my club. I want to dedicate my life to supporting research to find a cure or cures for HIV!”
Brown became famous as a symbol of hope for those facing diagnoses of HIV and AIDS. Since he was cured, it was announced that another person, Adam Castillejo, would be cured of the virus in 2019.
Brown’s friend Mark S. King, who is also living with HIV, told BuzzFeed News that Brown’s “greatest hope was that he would not be the only one” and that many more people would join him in healing.
“He didn’t live to see that promise fulfilled,” King said. “But it was immeasurable, the impact it had on the hopes and morale of people living with HIV like me. We projected so much into Timothy, like, oh my gosh, maybe one day he could cure me.”
Going public was not an easy decision for Brown, but “he realized the power of becoming a symbol of hope and an advocate for more investigations,” King said.
“Getting out of your comfort zone to become a symbol for millions of people around the world is not an easy task,” said King. “This was a modest man of very humble means who was just trying to stay alive. He never asked to be the center of attention, and when he had to step in to give us this symbol of hope, he did so willingly and with great kindness.”
Brown died Tuesday of a leukemia recurrence at his home in Palm Springs, California, where he had been receiving palliative care. His partner, Tim Hoeffgen, was at his side.
King said he last spoke to Brown by phone about a week and a half before he died.
“As any long-term survivor of HIV will tell you, we’ve had a lot of recent calls with people,” King said. “What you learn is that it is not the last call that matters, it is the hundred phone calls before that … and that is what I choose to remember, the friendship I was able to have with him over the years.”
Brown, who was born in Seattle, was diagnosed with HIV in 1995 while living in Berlin. He and Hoeffgen met in Henderson, Nevada, in 2013 after he went public with his cure, Hoeffgen wrote in a Facebook post announcing Brown’s death.
“I was instantly attracted by her smile, wit, beautiful face and very sweet nature,” wrote Hoeffgen. “We enjoy being together all the time, so I asked him to move in with me six months later.”
Brown loved to travel the world, watch the news, go to the movies and “was a happy and gentle soul, but he would get grumpy if he didn’t have his double espresso in the morning,” Hoeffgen wrote.
“I feel truly blessed to have shared a life together, but my heart aches because my hero is gone,” Hoeffgen wrote.
In a statement Wednesday, the International AIDS Society extended its condolences to Hoeffgen and thanked Brown and his doctor for how much they contributed to medical research.
“We owe Timothy and his physician, Gero Hütter, great gratitude for opening the door for scientists to explore the concept that a cure for HIV is possible,” said the IAS.
The treatment that cured Brown and Castillejo’s HIV cases “is not a viable, large-scale strategy for a cure.” [but does] they represent a critical moment in the search for a cure for HIV, “said Sharon Lewin, HIV researcher and president-elect of IAS, in the statement.
“Timothy was a champion and advocate for keeping the HIV cure on the political and scientific agenda,” Lewin said. “It is the hope of the scientific community that we can one day honor his legacy with a safe, cost-effective and widely accessible strategy to achieve HIV remission and cure through gene editing or techniques that stimulate immune control.”
