University College London Professor Emeritus Robin Weiss (left) has studied retroviruses for most of his career and made many important contributions to HIV research, including the identification of CD4 as the HIV T-cell-surface receptor. He notes, however, that he may be better known for discovering that retroviral genes are inherited like Mendelian traits. “That was the bigger discovery in the sense of shifting paradigms,” he said. Weiss is no stranger to activism, organizing the 2000 Durban Declaration with vaccine advocate Peter Hale. They gathered signatures from 5,000 scientists and doctors affirming that HIV was the cause of AIDS, in order to combat AIDS denialism, particularly that of Thabo Mbeki, then president of South Africa. Hale switched from a career in advertising to focus on HIV/AIDS advocacy when he first learned about the discovery of the virus. Read their introduction to this issue’s special section on vaccines.
Many immunologists are only ...
