In 1996 Stephen Crohn was dubbed, “The Man Who Can’t Catch AIDS”, after it was found that his white blood cells had a genetic defect that made him resistant to the virus even when tested with “HIV concentrations thousands of times greater than would be encountered outside a test tube.” Being “immune” to HIV, he saw all of his friends die and last month, took his own life at age 66.

My brother saw all of his friends dying, and he didn’t die. He went through a tremendous amount of survivor guilt about that and said to himself, ‘There’s got to be a reason.’

He shares this genetic defect/AIDS immunity (known as the delta 32 mutation) with only 1% of the world’s population and has dramatically furthered the study of the virus. In 2006, an AIDS patient in Berlin was effectively cured of the disease after receiving bone marrow transplants from a matching donor who had the delta 32 mutation.

[Source : Daily News, The New York Times]