Students and Alumni Touch the World
SFU Alum’s HIV/AIDS Research Sparks International Controversy
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SFU alumnus (science ’97) Michael Worobey, associate professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, is the 2009 recipient of SFU’s Nora and Ted Sterling prize in support of controversy. His findings (published in Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)—that HIV first arrived in America in 1969 via a single individual from Haiti, not directly from Africa or from any other suggested route—were seen as an unfair demonization of this poor, exploited country, prompting attacks from the scientific community, the media and the public. His safety was threatened and his integrity questioned. However, the importance of his work has since been recognized and honoured, and his discoveries are now widely accepted.