AIDS researcher was ‘a real advocate’
Trail-blazing Canadian AIDS researcher Mark Wainberg died suddenly in Florida following a swimming incident in Bal Harbour near Miami.
According to the Bal Harbour Police Department, Wainberg had difficulties in the water Tuesday afternoon.
His son had lost sight of him in the water and swam out to get him, said acting police chief Mike De La Rosa. His son brought him to shore where police and first responders performed CPR. He was taken to hospital where he was declared dead.
It is not clear what malaise had affected Wainberg in the water, De La Rosa said.
Wainberg, 71, was the director of the McGill University AIDS Centre at the Jewish General Hospital and past president of the International AIDS Society.
Officials at the Jewish General Hospital will not be commenting until Thursday, said Tod Hoffman, of the centre’s public relations.
“We haven’t been able to get in contact with the family — we can’t confirm because of the Passover holiday. They are still in Florida, that’s my understanding,” Hoffman said. However, news of Wainberg’s death has spread through the research community.
Internationally renowned as a researcher in the field of HIV/ AIDS, Wainberg started his work in the 1980s. Professor of medicine and microbiology and immunology at McGill University, he established the McGill AIDS Centre in 1984 at the Jewish General Hospital, and was instrumental in founding the Canadian Association for HIV Research.
Wainberg is known for his discovery of 3TC as an antiviral drug in 1989, as well as for his contributions in the field of anti-HIV drug resistance. His work focused on innovative approaches to HIV prevention in developing countries.
Last year, in a column that was published in The Gazette marking World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, Wainberg railed against the double standards that hamper the fight against AIDS in developing countries. AIDS continues to kill and infect several million people each year, he argued, and antiretroviral (ARV) drugs that have saved millions of lives should be made available to all.
For the World Health Organization strategy to have a chance at success, he wrote, “we need to use the best ARVs available to treat everyone in the world, and not to maintain a double standard whereby such drugs are reserved for patients in rich countries while their counterparts in most poor countries, where the epidemic is most severe, continue to routinely receive therapy that most Canadian physicians and patients would consider to be substandard.”
He is being mourned by the entire community, said Matthew Halse, executive director of AIDS Community Care Montreal. Apart from his research, he should be remembered for his focus on getting medication into developing countries, and for his involvement in local initiatives in the community, Halse said.
“He was more than a researcher, he was a real advocate.”
Ken Monteith, executive director at COCQ-SIDA, a coalition of community groups involved in the fight against AIDS, noted that Wainberg contributed to the discovery of treatments that continue to be in use today.
“He worked really hard to make sure there was a space for Quebec researchers to share their work in French, as a lot of scientific conferences are held in English” he said. Wainberg organized bilingual conferences annually, and he made space for community groups and people living with HIV, “so we all had access to the same information.
“This is really important — not every scientist has time for lay people, and he always did,” Monteith said.
While his death will leave a wide gap, Monteith said, Wainberg ’s diligent support of young researchers, “made sure of the continuity and future for research.”
As president of the International AIDS Society, Wainberg organized the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, in 2000. He also co-chaired the 16th conference in Toronto in 2006.
In 2001, Wainberg was named to the Order of Canada, and made an officer of the National Order of Quebec in 2005.
He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2000, and in 2008 was named a Chevalier of France’s Legion d’honneur.
Two years ago, Wainberg was inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame for revolutionizing the understanding of HIV/ AIDS at the medical and political levels.