George E Parris

The Day AIDS Began March 14, 1927 George E Parris

My interest in HIV grew out of my interest in how parasites prevent cells they invade from committing suicide. I had been studying apoptosis and in particular the functions of the protein Bcl-2. As soon as I read that the cells that are infected with HIV-1M kill similar cells (bystanders) that are not infected with HIV, I immediately suspected that the virus was fortifying infected cells against apoptosis and probably making their cytokine response more potent. The result was that the infected cells were inadvertently killing off uninfected cells in an immune system war of attrition. From there, I developed a hypothesis that seems reasonable.