December 1, 2013

To all attendees of the World AIDS Day Symposium at Northwestern,

Greetings to you all, and thank you for your efforts to end the HIV epidemic. My name is Timothy Ray Brown, some of you may know me as “the ” and the first person in the world cured of HIV. My story began with a stem cell transplant almost 7 years ago to cure my cancer, and because of the courage and innovation of my medical team this difficult procedure also ended up curing my HIV. I am writing to you now because it is very fitting to announce another step forward in the fight to have an HIV-free world, as we mark this 25th Anniversary of World AIDS Day. I am happy to announce that I will be visiting Chicago in the spring of 2014 to celebrate the 7th anniversary of my cure as part of what we are calling the Cure Tour. I announced the formation of the Timothy Ray Brown Foundation of the World AIDS Institute at the International AIDS Conference in Washington, DC, July 2012 to advocate for awareness, education and full funding for HIV cure research. My Foundation is the first organization in the 32 year history of the AIDS pandemic whose sole mission is to find a Cure for HIV. I decided to make the symbol of the foundation a Blue Rose, a flower that does not occur in nature but in alchemy has come to represent “the impossible – made possible”. My visit to Chicago is being made possible through a partnership between the Timothy Ray Brown Foundation of the World AIDS Institute, the Northwestern HIV Translational Research Center, and the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. I plan to participate in a number of events during my visit over a couple of days to raise awareness that HIV can be cured, and to advocate for research that will enable many more people living with HIV to also be cured. There are now many promising leads that may enable new strategies that are more feasible than my grown breaking stem cell transplant to lead to curing HIV, or what some scientists now refer to as “sustained remission”.

Several others - both infants and adults - now appear to also be in sustained remission from HIV infection. In the spring, the researchers will hold a symposium about many of these new ideas and approaches, including very early antiretroviral treatment that will allow antiretroviral medications to be stopped after a defined duration instead of being continued life-long. In addition to addressing the researchers, I plan to hold a special event for the AIDS and Gay community to tell my story and share some of the promise of current research in lay terms. I also will visit community organizations fighting bravely to end this epidemic throughout Chicago. Please look to see more information over the coming weeks, and I hope you can to attend. I look forward to meeting you in Chicago this Spring.

All the Best,

Timothy Ray Brown