ABOVE: Timothy Ray Brown has gone from medical marvel to HIV/AIDS activist, spreading the hope that researchers can eventually develop a cure for the disease.
SCOTT TABER
In 2006, Timothy Ray Brown was bicycling through Berlin on his lunch break. He regularly cruised the city on two wheels, making a daily 14-mile round trip for work. But on this day, he got off and walked, too tired to make it back to work. “I called my partner and said, ‘I need to get an appointment with a doctor,’” Brown recalls.
Blood tests led to a bone marrow biopsy, which led to a diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia. From there a remarkable series of circumstances—some fortuitous, others debilitating—catapulted Brown into medical history: to this day he remains the only person who has been cured of AIDS.
Cure is not a word the HIV/AIDS community throws around lightly. “Nobody would dare to use ...
