Winter 1999
The Scientist and the Cure
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When
the participants in her study learned the news, they, perhaps better
than anyone else, understood what it meant. "The men who are HIV-infected
were so supportive, so concerned," recalls Giorgi, a thoughtful
woman with deep brown eyes and fair skin. "It gives you a sense
of what it must be like for people who have this problem that they
can't get rid of."
Giorgi
is now in remission. Her greatest daily struggle is with fatigue.
"All I want to do is go home and sleep," she says with a laugh one
afternoon while standing in a hallway near her office.
She
is philosophical about how the disease has changed her, brushing
off suggestions that she is stoic. "Everyone has difficulties in
their lives," she says. "I guess the reason we care so much about
people when they have an illness is it gives us strength in how
to deal with life. Duane says I'm happier than I've ever been. Maybe
I've learned that you don't have to worry all the time in order
to live.
These
days Giorgi spends more time on leisure -- learning to fly fish,
seeing paintings she's longed to see, chasing life from the back
of a Harley. Yet her resolve to help find a way to prevent HIV remains
strong.
She
may be facing her greatest professional challenge yet. Come January,
Giorgi will embark on a landmark vaccine study with Peter Anton,
a UCLA gastrointerologist who specializes in treating people with
AIDS. The trial -- the first of its kind to be done in humans --
will test a cowpox vaccine combined with non-infectious HIV genes.
The vaccine will be inserted in an unusual area -- near the groin
-- so that it can travel directly to the lymph nodes, a major site
for HIV infection. It's a route that's never been tried. By delivering
the vaccine this novel way, Giorgi believes it will stimulate the
right cellular immune response. If so, the study could hold far-reaching
implications for controlling AIDS, as well as other sexually transmitted
diseases.
Meanwhile,
the clock is ticking. For the estimated 16,000 people worldwide
newly infected with HIV every day. For Giorgi. "It's caught up with
our worst expectations about how global the spread will be," she
says of the epidemic. "Without a vaccine... ." Her voice trails
off.
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