In 1995, when powerful new AIDS cocktails and protease inhibitors were just being introduced, Mr. Brown was advised by a former boyfriend, who had tested H.I.V. He was referred to Dr. Gero Hütter, an oncologist who had never treated a patient with H.I.V. “I did not need to be a guinea pig and risk my life receiving a transplant that might kill me,” Mr. Brown later wrote in a medical journal. When it returned in January 2007, however, Mr. Brown agreed to the stem cell transplant therapy, which his doctors said would treat not only leukemia but possibly the H.I.V. “I was scared,” Mr. Brown told the New York Times podcast “The Daily” in 2019.

Source: International New York Times September 30, 2020 17:05 UTC