Max Essex

Max (Myron) Essex, DVM, PhD, is Chair of the Harvard School of Public Health AIDS Initiative, the Mary Woodard Lasker Professor of Health Sciences at Harvard University, and Chair of the Botswana–Harvard Partnership for HIV Research and Education in Gaborone, Botswana. He was one of the first to link animal and human retroviruses to immunosuppressive disease, to suspect that a retrovirus was the cause of AIDS, and to determine that HIV could be transmitted through blood and blood products to hemophiliacs and recipients of blood transfusions. With collaborators he also provided the first evidence that HIV could be transmitted by heterosexual intercourse.

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In 1984, Dr. Essex identified gp120, the virus surface protein that is used worldwide for blood screening, HIV detection, and epidemiological monitoring. With collaborators, he discovered the first simian immunodeficiency virus, as well as HIV-2. Since 1986, he has developed programs for AIDS collaboration in Senegal, Thailand, Botswana, India, Mexico, and China. In 1996, he helped establish the Botswana–Harvard Partnership for HIV Research and Education. This is a collaboration between the Ministry of Health in Botswana and HAI.

Dr. Essex holds 10 honorary doctorates and has received numerous awards, including the Lasker Award, the highest medical research award given in the United States, jointly with Gallo and Montagnier in 1986. He has published over 500 papers and 9 books, including two editions of AIDS in Africa, and his latest, AIDS in Asia.