Provide names of other journalists involved.
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List date(s) this work was published or aired.
June 6, 2011 issue
Provide a brief synopsis of the story or stories, including any significant findings.
This feature tells the story of the only person in the world who has ever been cured of HIV. Timothy Brown, a 45-year old inhabitant of San Francisco, was diagnosed with HIV in 1995. In 2007 he stopped taking antiretroviral medicine and has not resumed it — and yet the most sensitive tests have not been able to find any trace of HIV anywhere in his body. Brown’s cure — because he had leukemia, he got a stem cell transplant from a donor who had a mutation that made him immune to HIV — is obviously not the answer for anyone else. But his story has shocked AIDS researchers into resuming their long-abandoned search for a cure. And the news is good — several trials are showing good results with methods that use the ideas behind Brown’s cure in a way that might someday be available on a wide scale.
Explain types of documents, data or Internet resources used. Were FOI or public records act requests required? How did this affect the work?
The only documents used were scientific papers, which are of course already in the public domain.
Explain types of human sources used.
In person and telephone interviews with Brown, numerous AIDS researchers, activists and bureaucrats.
Results:
The story has contributed to an important course correction in AIDS research, which has almost completely ignored research toward a cure — the NIAID spent only 3 percent of its AIDS research money on cure research in 2009. Anthony Fauci was planning to award a new grant for cure research — $42.5 million to two research groups. But six weeks after the article was published, he announced that the grant had been increased to $70 million for three research groups. The reason for the increase, he said, was that there was so much new interest in cure research.
Follow-up (if any). Have you run a correction or clarification on the report or has anyone come forward to challenge its accuracy? If so, please explain.
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Advice to other journalists planning a similar story or project.
The reporting for this article was fairly straightforward. One major challenge was sifting through dozens of scientific papers on AIDS research, separating what was important from what was not, and communicating the results in a way readers could understand.