Richard Krause, science administrator in AIDS crisis, dies at 90

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Richard Krause, science administrator in AIDS crisis, dies at 90

By Adam Bernstein January 13 at 8:35 PM
[e-mail]

Richard M. Krause, a microbiologist and immunologist who steered the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases through the early, tumultuous years of the AIDS epidemic, died Jan. 6 at a hospital in Washington. He was 90.
....

Dr. Krause presided over the institute at a time when AIDS, marginalized at first by many in the medical establishment as a “gay disease,” began to emerge as a national epidemic.

In 1981, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a federal medical bulletin, published some of the first scientific accounts of what would soon become the AIDS crisis. In later interviews, Dr. Krause said it was initially unclear whether AIDS was a cancer — and therefore under the bailiwick of the National Cancer Institute — or a sexually transmitted disease and thus a matter for NIAID.

Once it became clear that the NIAID had a role to play in responding to the disease, he organized high-level conferences to explore its possible causes, including one chaired by polio vaccine developer Albert Sabin.

[shenmue]

1. ...