Françoise Barré-Sinoussi: 'Ruling out a cure for Aids would not be French'

The scientist who helped discover the HIV retrovirus talks about her work and why she is convinced a cure for Aids can be foundFor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, San Francisco holds poignant memories. The Nobel prize-winning virologist based at the Pasteur Institute in Paris is attending a conference on how to rid the world of Aids. But the city reminds her of the terrible early years of the disease. She first met a person dying from Aids in a hospital in San Francisco in 1984. "It was a very moving moment," she recalls. "He told me, 'Thank you' and I didn't understand why. So I asked and he said, 'Not for me, for the others'." The man died a couple of days later.His appreciation was because the year before – 30 years ago this year – Barré-Sinoussi had been first author of the paper that reported the discovery of the cause of Aids, a retrovirus later named human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), although it would be another 13 years before antiretroviral drugs to treat it would become available. That 1983 discovery earned Barré-Sinoussi and her former colleague Luc Montagnier the 2008 Nobel prize for medicine (they shared it with Harald zur Hausen, who discovered that human papilloma virus causes cervical cancer). "Never before has science and medicine been so quick to discover, identify the origin and provide treatment for a new disease entity," noted the Nobel committee."I never felt that I received the Nobel prize personally," says Barré-Sinoussi, explaining that scientist...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Medical research Nobel prizes Society Features Aids and HIV The Observer Science Source Type: news