David Da-i Ho ( ; born November 3, 1952) is a
Taiwanese American AIDS researcher famous for pioneering the use of
protease inhibitors in treating
HIV-infected patients with his team.
Biography
Born in
Taichung
, Taiwan
to Paul (an
engineer) and Sonia Ho, from Jiangxi
Province who
fled to Taiwan from the Mainland in 1949, David Ho immigrated at the age of
twelve to the United
States
with his mother and younger brother to unite with
his father, who had already been in the US for nine years.
He grew up
in Los
Angeles
and received his bachelor of science in physics with
highest honors from the California
Institute of Technology
(1974) and MD
from the Harvard-MIT
Division of Health Sciences and Technology (1978).
Subsequently, he did his clinical training in
internal medicine and infectious
diseases at UCLA
School of
Medicine (1978-1982) and Massachusetts General Hospital
(1982-1985), respectively. He was a resident
in internal medicine at
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in
Los Angeles in 1981 when he came into contact with some of the
first reported cases of what was later identified as AIDS.
Living in
Chappaqua, New
York
, Ho is married to artist Susan Kuo, with whom he
has three children: Kathryn, Jonathan, and Jaclyn. He is a
member of the
Committee
of 100, a
Chinese American
leadership organization, in addition to several scientific
groups.
Research
Ho has been at the forefront of AIDS research for 26 years. He
published over 350 papers, enabling the scientific community to
understand the mechanism of HIV replication. He championed the
combination anti-retroviral therapy which allowed the control of
HIV replication in patients. AIDS mortality has declined six times
in developed countries since 1996, and international efforts are
under way to bring the treatment to patients in the developing
world.
Ho shifted his work from treating late in the illness to finding
ways to fight the disease early on. Ho helped devise the
HAART or highly active anti-retroviral
therapy, which prescribes a cocktail of drugs to treat AIDS, on the
theory that it would be more effective to combine powerful
protease inhibitors with
other HIV medications.
Ho’s research team is now working on developing vaccines for AIDS.
He heads a consortium of organization in China and the U.S. to
address the crisis of
HIV/AIDS in
China.
Honors and titles
Ho has received numerous honors and awards for his scientific
accomplishments. He is the recipient of ten honorary doctorates,
including from Swarthmore, Tufts, Columbia, Tulane, University of
Natal, and Tsinghua University. He has been chosen as the
commencement speaker at Caltech, MIT, and Harvard School of Public
Health. Other accolades include the Ernst Jung Prize in Medicine,
Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Science & Technology, the
Squibb Award, and the Hoechst Marion Roussel Award. On January 8,
2001, Ho was presented with the
Presidential Citizens Medal by
President
Clinton.
Ho is an honorary professor at Peking Union Medical College,
Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
University of Hong Kong, Wuhan University, and Fudan University. He
was a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University and
the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology. He
is a board member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Corporation.
Ho was
Time magazine's 1996
Man of the Year.
Time
later recalled the selection surprised both Ho and readers, with
one reader calling Ho "Dr. David Who?" The magazine acknowledged in
1996 that "Ho is not, to be sure, a household name. But some people
make headlines while others make history." Ho was even briefly
mentioned when
Alexander Fleming
was considered for Person of the Century in 1999, since Fleming
could be portrayed as representative of other scientists including
Ho, but the title ultimately went to
Albert Einstein.
Ho has
been elected as a member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences
, Academia Sinica,
and the Institute of Medicine
of the National Academy.
He is
currently the scientific director and chief executive officer of
the Aaron Diamond
AIDS Research Center and the Irene Diamond Professor at the
Rockefeller
University
in New
York
.
On
2006-12-06,
California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady
Maria Shriver inducted Ho into the
California Hall of Fame
located at
The
California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.
Quotes
- "This is a problem for the world and therefore we're going to
solve it."
- "I began with an interest in this medical curiosity, never
realizing that this was going to be a big health problem for the
public. But, the scientific aspect was extremely interesting in
that here we were looking at something that was transmissible,
capable of destroying the immune system. That was new and one way
or another the science behind that would shed light on bugs and on
the immune system. So, I was gung-ho from day one of the
epidemic."
Sources
References
- (Nature 1995; Science 1996)
- (N. Engl. J. Med. 1995; Science 1996)
- (Nature 1997)
- Time, Person of the Year: 75th Anniversary
Celebration, Special Collector's Edition, Time Books, 2002, p.
108.
- Time Millennium, Collector's Edition, Time Inc.
Specials, p. 21.
External links
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