Joseph Sonnabend facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Joseph Sonnabend FRCP Ed
Born	Joseph Adolph Sonnabend (1933-01-06)6 January 1933 Johannesburg, Union of South Africa
Died	24 January 2021(2021-01-24) (aged 88) London, England
Alma mater	University of the Witwatersrand (MBBCh)
Occupation	Physician and clinical researcher
Known for	Pioneering HIV/AIDS research
Relatives	Yolanda Sonnabend (sister)

Joseph Adolph Sonnabend (6 January 1933 – 24 January 2021) was a South African physician, scientist and HIV/AIDS researcher, notable for pioneering community-based research, the propagation of ... to prevent infection, and an early multifactorial model of AIDS.

As one of the first physicians to notice among his gay male patients the immune deficiency that would later be named AIDS, during the 1980s and 1990s he treated many hundreds of HIV-positive people. During the height of the AIDS crisis, Sonnabend helped create several AIDS organisations, including the AIDS Medical Foundation (now amfAR), the nonprofit Community Research Initiative (now ACRIA), which pioneered community-based research, and the PWA Health Group, the first and largest formally recognised buyers' club.

..... He was widely respected as a pioneering and compassionate clinician and researcher.

Background

Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where Sonnabend was an associate professor in the early 1970s

Sonnabend was born on 6 January 1933 in Johannesburg, South Africa, and grew up in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). His mother was a physician and his father a sociologist. Both parents were Jewish immigrants from Europe.

He trained in infectious diseases at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. During the 1960s he conducted research at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, where he worked under Alick Isaacs, a pioneer of interferon research.

In the early 1970s Sonnabend moved to New York City to be an associate professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. After losing his interferon research grant he worked at Kings County Hospital Center and as Director of Continuing Medical Education at the Bureau of VD Control for the New York City Department of Health. .....

Sonnabend died on 24 January 2021 at Wellington Hospital in London, as a result of complications arising from a heart attack he had suffered three weeks earlier.

Early AIDS work

Sonnabend was one of the first physicians to notice among his gay male patients the immune deficiency that would later be named AIDS. His background in microbiology, virology, infectious diseases and prior experience of working with immunocompromised transplant patients helped him to conduct some of the earliest research into AIDS, often at his own expense, independently of government agencies that were slow to respond to the epidemic, In 1983 he was founding editor of one of the first AIDS journals, AIDS Research (renamed AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses in 1986, after Sonnabend was fired from the journal).

Multifactorial model of AIDS

Prior to the identification of HIV as the cause of AIDS in 1984, Sonnabend's investigations led him to propose that AIDS among gay men might be caused by multiple factors including Epstein–Barr virus and repeated exposure to cytomegalovirus and semen. This suggestion conflicted with the view that a single agent was likely responsible, which Sonnabend did not rule out.

.....

Role in founding AIDS organisations

To help fund his research and that of other scientists—and because the CDC were dismissive of his expertise and uninterested in his assistance—Sonnabend contacted his friend Mathilde Krim to ask for help to fund his research. With Krim and others they established the AIDS Medical Foundation (AMF) in 1983. This organisation would later become amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, one of the world's leading nonprofit supporters of HIV/AIDS research, prevention and advocacy.

Pneumocystis jirovecii cysts from bronchoalveolar lavage, stained with Toluidin blue O stain

A pioneer of community-based research in the absence of effective government efforts, Sonnabend also helped to establish the nonprofit Community Research Initiative (CRI, later renamed CRIA, then ACRIA) in New York in 1987. One of CRI's early achievements was a trial that contributed to the approval of inhaled pentamidine for preventing Pneumocystis pneumonia, a common AIDS-related infection. Sonnabend served as medical director of CRI/CRIA until 1996.

Sonnabend was particularly concerned by the ethical issues around the AIDS crisis, winning the Nellie Westerman Prize for Research in Ethics with his co-authors in 1983 for the article "Confidentiality, Informed Consent and Untoward Social Consequences in Research on a 'New Killer Disease' (AIDS)" in the journal Clinical Research. He has written about how the AIDS crisis required a "more intimate" kind of practice; Dr Krim described that "he's the only doctor I know who goes to every funeral".

This concern led him to found the PWA Health Group with Michael Callen and Thomas Hannan in 1986. This non-profit organisation was the first and largest formally recognised AIDS buyers' club, which aimed to widen access to promising AIDS therapies not yet approved by the FDA; the PWA Health Group went on to become an important source of AIDS treatment education and advocacy. In 2000, PWA Health Group merged with Direct Aids Alternative Information Resources (DAAIR), but the combined organisation closed in 2003 and was superseded in July of the following year by the New York Buyers' Club.

Assessments of Sonnabend's career

Despite his unconventional and often controversial opinions, mainstream AIDS researchers have in recent years become less critical of Sonnabend, recognising his devotion as a physician and patients' champion.

In 2005, he retired from medical practice and moved to London. On World AIDS Day that year, he was awarded a Red Ribbon Leadership Award from the National HIV/AIDS Partnership.

Personal life

Sonnabend was gay, although he fathered two sons in his twenties and was at one time married.

His sister, Yolanda Sonnabend, was a stage designer and artist. His relationship with her was documented in the 2015 film Some Kind of Love.

He composed music throughout his life, and discussed his music on the radio programme Outlook on the BBC World Service in 2018.