| AdminHistory | The papers given to the archives of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in February 2014 relate to the career of Dr Joseph A Sonnabend (born 6 January 1933) who was educated in Zimbabwe and Italy, and received his MBBCh from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa in 1956. He subsequently went on to train in the United Kingdom and became a Member of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) of Edinburgh in 1961. Two years later he joined the team working on interferon with Alick Isaacs at the National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill in London, where he made significant contributions to understanding of the mechanisms of interferon's antiviral action. In the early 1970's he continued his work on interferon as an associate professor at the Mount Sinai Medical Centre in New York, and his work on interferon led to his interest in endogenous interferon in AIDS patients, and it was his suggestion that led to the discovery of large amounts of interferon in the blood of AIDS patients as early as 1981. In 1978 he entered private practice in New York, where he had worked both for the Bureau of Venereal Disease Control at the city's Department of Health, and also as a volunteer at the Gay Men's Health Project.
His background in biomedicine, and in particular diseases of the immuno-suppressed host, together with his knowledge of epidemiology, and his experience of treating sexually transmitted disease in the gay community of the late 1970s, gave him a unique angle of scientific and social insight at the time of the onset of the AIDS epidemic, both treating patients and initiating early research. Finding himself at the front-line of a major emergency, he was active in setting up a large number of important initiatives, ranging from the AIDS Medical Foundation (AMF) which became the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR), to the journal AIDS Research of which he was the founder-Editor, the Community Research Initiative (CRI), and the PWA (People With AIDS) Health Group. Furthermore his interest in the social context of infectious disease encouraged him to play an active role in education and prevention work, including extensive documentation related to his 1983 publication How To Have Sex In An Epidemic, which he co-authored together with two of his patients, Michael Callen and Richard Berkowitz, and self-published. This launched the whole idea of risk reduction programmes founded on the principles of Safe Sex, a term they introduced. Having grown up in the former British colony of Rhodesia, he also retained a strong interest in the impact of AIDS in Africa and elsewhere, and for more than thirty years he has played a central role in the course of the unfolding pandemic.
Joseph Sonnabend died on 21 January 2021.
The range of materials included
The extensive papers in this archive document his career from his early work on interferon in London in the 1960s, up to the present day. Some of the material is duplicated in the archives lodged in the New York Public Library (Joseph A Sonnabend Papers 1963-2004, MissCol 6223) but much is original and unique, including the extensive paperwork associated with interferon, and much else besides. Other material is housed in the National Archive of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender History at the LGBT Centre in New York (archive no. 120, 1964-1996). In the course of organising the material for transfer to the LSHTM, the storage categories employed at the New York Public Library have been broadly followed. Self-evident classifications have tried to be maintained, although it should be appreciated that some files inevitably contain over-lapping material. Most of the papers have been sorted alongside Dr Sonnabend, and hand-written explanatory information has been added as the material was filed, most of which comments he dictated.
The papers include working laboratory notebooks and other documentation relating to Dr Sonnabend's extensive professional career; research data; original publications; notes for publications and talks; conference papers and related material: patient records; the documentation of numerous institutions founded by Dr Sonnabend; correspondence relating both to research, education, and patients; medical ethics and confidentiality issues; and so on. It does not include his personal correspondence, related photographic archive material, or sound archive material, which have not yet been sorted and classified.
The significance of the papers
The significance of the Joseph Sonnabend papers lies in their range and duration, reflecting his expertise as a virologist and infectious disease specialist, and his work as a practising physician specialising in sexually transmitted diseases. His papers reflect his innovative and central role in epidemiology, medical ethics, and prevention work. They reflect his role in understanding the etiology and epidemiology of the AIDS epidemic, as well as the history of treatment research, prevention work, and community based
initiatives. His work played a significant role in prevention work in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the early years of the epidemic, just as many of the institutions he helped found exercised direct influence outside America.
His refutation of the work of 'AIDS denialists' (such as Peter Duesberg) placed him in the foreground of international controversy, as did his early insistence of understanding the social context of a newly identified pathogen (HIV). He was committed to a multi-factorial approach to epidemiology, in which he was much influenced by the work of René Jules Dubos (1901-1982) [Man Adapting, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1965]. This approach was sometimes criticised as being incompatible with monocausal explanations of disease. He also received criticism for his consideration of socio-sexual lifestyle, in particular the adoption of safe sex as advocated in the booklet ‘How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach’, for which he was a consultant.
Dr Sonnabend brought with him the basic principles of the early National Health Service (NHS) in the UK to his clinical work in America, and his caution with unproven potential treatment drugs such as Zidovudine (AZT) undoubtedly contributed to the high survival rates amongst his patients. The inclusion of extensive personal documentation relating to his countless patients, including correspondence from bereaved friends and families, will doubtless prove significant to future historians.
The papers also reflect the range and extent of his published work, both for established peer-reviewed scientific journals, periodicals and also in a wide variety of popular non-scientific and community-based publications read by those most directly affected by the epidemic.
|