[Letter from David D. Ho]

OG Y6R. ALLONO. 332 r..99 90
OCT.23. 1996 5 0sP F INST. HUMAN VIROLOGY/DR. GALLO NO.33 ".,v, fl3.
study them. And one year later, they had pressured the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) to hold its first-ever meeting on "immune and Host Factors in HIV Pathogenesise."
For the first time, researchers from around the world came together to ask a tough
question: Why were some people repeatedly exposed to HIV apparently immune to
infection, while others were apparent long4term survivors?
The field exploded. Researchers began to share blood samples collected over a decade
ago, subjecting them to new, high4ech assays, looking for the elusive clues to protection
from HiV infection or progression.
Scientists at our lab and others discovered several factors contributing to long-tenrm
survival. First, the long-term survivors had a potent and durable immune response to
HIV. Second, some of them had defective HIV. Third, and perhaps most importantly,
they had very low viral levels in their blood, some beneath the limit of detection by current
tests.
This led us to speculate that, if we could reduce viral load to these low levels, we might
turn most HIV-infected persons into long-term survivors. At the recent Vancouver AIDS
conference in July, researchers from the Diamond Center arid four other teams
demonstrated that, with potent combinations, HIV levels can be reduced in the blood to
levels undetectable with even the most sensitive viral load tests. We are now following
those patients to see if they clear HIV from their lymph nodes as well, and other sanctuary
sites around the body.
All these discoveries might have been made in time. But the contribution of TAG to
speeding up AIDS research, forcing the NIH to coordinate it better, strengthening the
Office of AIDS Research (OAR), and defending AIDS research in Congress, has been
incalculable.
Whereas previous organizations turned gay men and lesbians into AIDS aotivists, TAG
successfully turned AIDS researchers into activists, TAG has worked with the leading
AIDS researchers around the world to accomplish a lot, on a shoe-string budget.
Together, we have worked to foster studies on long-term survivors. Together, we have
worked to strengthen basic research on AIDS, which is now bearing much fruit. And
together, we are working to expand our discoveries and educate the community about
what these discoveries mean and how they apply to the daily lives of people with HIV
disease.
TAG is essential to maintaining the momentum which hes bmought us this far. Yet,

despite the media hype, we are far from a cure, and a vaccine remains as elusive as
ever. And perhaps most distressingly, AIDS research remains under attack in Congress.
Now is not the time to rest on our laurels.
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