HIV/AIDS Research Efforts Of New York Scientist Featured

The Brook Community Newspapers/Connecticut Post profiled New York researcher Jeffrey Laurence, who "helped at the outset to fully identify" HIV along with French virologist Luc Antoine Montagnier and others. Laurence, now of the Weill Cornell Medical College Laboratory for AIDS Virus Research at the New York Blood Center, in 1984, "published a paper with Montagnier in the New England Journal of Medicine that brought the news that their virus was the cause of AIDS," the article states. Since the discovery Laurence has continued his research seeking to develop a cure or vaccine for the virus, which now includes investigating the role of stem cells. He said, "The technology is too young to try to say we can cure someone of AIDS or of cancer. We need money to know how to engineer, to refine stem cells to be resistant to infection." The article states, "Laurence is pleased however, that President Barack Obama is 'kinder on stem cells and is releasing some of the restrictions,'" on stem cell research (Semmes, 7/24).