David Ho

David Da-i Ho (何大一, pinyin: Hé Dàyī) (born November 3, 1952) is a Taiwanese American AIDS researcher famous for pioneering the use of protease inhibitors in treating HIV-infected patients with his team.

Early Life
Born in Taichung, Taiwan to Paul (an engineer ) and Sonia Ho, David Ho immigrated at the age of twelve to the United States, to unite with his father, who had already been in the USA for nine years at the time. He grew up in Los Angeles and received his Bachelor of Science in Physics with highest honor from the California Institute of Technology (1974) and his MD from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (1978). Subsequently, he did his clinical training in internal medicine and infectious diseases at UCLA School of Medicine (1978-1982) and Massachusetts General Hospital (1982-1985), respectively. He was a resident in internal medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles in 1981 when he came into contact with some of the first reported cases of what was later identified as AIDS.

Making his residence in Chappaqua, New York, Ho is married to artist Susan Kuo, with whom he has three children: Kathryn, Jonathan, and Jaclyn. He is a member of the Committee of 100, a Chinese American leadership organization, in addition to several scientific groups. Interestingly, despite his high professional profile, his command of the English language, his role as director of a U.S. corporation, and his successful assimilation into U.S. culture, Ho still performs his mathematical calculations in Chinese.

Research
Ho was one of the first scientists to propose that AIDS was caused by a virus although he had never been able to isolate HIV from an HIV+ person. Among an impressive list of seminal contributions to the field, he is perhaps most recognized for the elucidation of the dynamic nature of HIV replication in infected persons. This basic understanding led Dr. Ho and his coworkers to champion combination antiretroviral therapy, including the use of protease inhibitors, that has resulted in dramatic reductions in AIDS-associated mortality in developed countries since 1996. Dr. Ho continues to pursue therapeutic studies that attempt to eradicate HIV. In addition, his research team is now devoting considerable efforts to develop a vaccine to halt the spread of the AIDS epidemic.

Ho shifted his work from treating late in the illness to finding ways to fight the disease early on. Ho devised the method of treating HIV with "cocktails". He theorized that combining the powerful protease inhibitor drugs with other HIV medications would provide a more effective way to treat the disease.

Honors and titles
David Ho was TIME magazine's 1996 Man of the Year. TIME later recalled the selection surprised both Ho and readers, with one reader calling Ho "Dr. David Who?" TIME acknowledged in 1996 that "Ho is not, to be sure, a household name. But some people make headlines while others make history." Ho was even briefly mentioned when Alexander Fleming was considered for Person of the Century in 1999, since Fleming could be portrayed as representative of other scientists including Ho, but the title ultimately went to Albert Einstein.

Dr. Ho has been elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academia Sinica, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy. He is currently the scientific director and chief executive officer of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and the Irene Diamond Professor at the Rockefeller University in New York.

On 2006-12-06, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Dr. Ho into the California Hall of Fame located at The California Museum for History, Women, and the Arts.

Quotes

 * "This is a problem for the world and therefore we're going to solve it."