Thursday, Mar. 29, 2012

Robert Grant

Age: 52
Occupation: AIDS researcher, Gladstone Institutes

Ask anyone with AIDS awareness about the latest groundswell for controlling HIV, and most will mention Grant. In the early 2000s, he pushed to test antiviral drugs to protect healthy, uninfected people at high risk of becoming HIV-positive. It was a tough sell, but he was right. Not only can treating uninfected individuals protect them from getting HIV, but also, giving newly infected patients antivirals can lower their risk of developing AIDS. Some say these breakthroughs are a turning point in the epidemic.