World leader in AIDS fight dies in Swissair crash

Dr. Mann
September 3, 1998
Web posted at: 3:12 p.m. EDT (1512 GMT)
In this story:

Warned world about spread of AIDS
Urged testing of AIDS vaccine
Wife contributed to development of vaccines

From CNN Medical Correspondent Dan Rutz

(CNN) -- World leaders in the war against AIDS are in shock over the loss of two of their most trusted and admired colleagues. Dr. Jonathan Mann and his wife, Dr. Mary Lou Clements-Mann, were aboard the Swissair jetliner that crashed off the coast of Canada on Wednesday night.

In the 1980s, Mann launched the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, becoming one of the first to recognize the global threat. He was head of the program from 1986 to 1990.

"In the '80s, he was truly a visionary at a time when it was absolutely not clear how devastating and epidemic AIDS would become," said Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS. "He pulled off what he called a global response both in developing and developed countries."

Warned world about spread of AIDS
As director of the International AIDS Conference six years ago in Amsterdam, Mann warned of a complacency among world leaders in the fight against AIDS.

"The gap between the intensifying pace of the pandemic and the lagging national and global response is widening rapidly and dangerously, and global vulnerability to AIDS is increasing," he said.

Mann started his career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after graduation. He resigned from the Harvard School of Public Health in December to be dean of Allegheny University of the Health Sciences' School of Public Health in Philadelphia.

Urged testing of AIDS vaccine
Two months ago, Mann voiced impatience over what he considered unconscionable delays in widespread testing of a vaccine to prevent AIDS -- what many in public health consider the only way to control the worldwide explosion of new cases.

"We must now work to develop the vaccine that will prevent disease and we must do this in a way that respects the urgency of the problem," he said.

To some, he became the conscience for the AIDS research effort, with his eloquent defense of those most vulnerable to the disease. AIDS, he noted, disproportionately affected the poor or disenfranchised members of society including gay men and minorities, who were often stigmatized or discriminated against.

He was patient with AIDS activists, and worked to convince others that the fields of public health and human rights were inseparable.

"It is a fundamental public health strategy, in general, to try to bring them in," he said in 1992. "Convince them, bring them in -- don't push them out, exclude them, discriminate against them, fight them."

Wife contributed to development of vaccines

Dr. Clements-Mann

Mary Lou Clements-Mann made her mark in vaccine development for diseases including AIDS, influenza and hepatitis B.

"If a vaccine will prevent AIDS by reducing the amount of virus in an infected person and controlling that infection, it may also have the public benefit of reducing the transmission to others."

She met Mann while working on her AIDS vaccine projects. They married a year and a half ago.

The couple was flying Wednesday to a U.N. AIDS vaccine conference in Geneva. Friends and colleagues gathered there Thursday for a memorial service.