OBITUARIES For the full versions of articles in this section see bmj.com

Alan Berkman Radical doctor who helped bring HIV drugs to millions

The US physician Alan Berkman will be best of dynamite. He was tried, and also very grounded remembered for his role in helping to make life found guilty, and served in practicality, she said of saving HIV treatments available to millions of eight years in a federal that first encounter. “He people in the developing world. It was the capstone penitentiary. was not afraid to call this to the unique and colourful life of an advocate His experience in prison crisis what it was—medical who pushed for radical social justice. That journey changed his tactics but not apartheid, racism, a crime included service to the most marginalised of his commitment to social against humanity. He was people at home and abroad; eight years in federal justice. He told the New York never afraid to speak out, prison; and the prestige of an Ivy League university. Times in a 1994 interview, even when it made powerful A New Yorker by birth, Berkman became “Power is corrupting. And people uncomfortable.” radicalised during the Vietnam war while an the use of violence is a form Cost was the major undergraduate student at Cornell and at medical of power. People motivated When authorities caught up with impediment to bringing school at . He joined the leftist to stop the suffering of others him in May 1985, they seized a antiretroviral drugs to Students for a Democratic Society and its more have to be careful not to pistol, shotgun, and 100 pounds developing nations. Health radical faction. be caught up in the same GAP sought to break the He brought his medical skills to the service dynamics” (www.nytimes. of dynamite pharmaceutical business of prisoners who, complaining about living com, 10 Jan 1994, “Healing model of pricing and patents conditions, rioted and seized control of the large on parole; doctor and ex-prisoner, he treats others that made treatment prohibitively expensive. It state prison in Attica, New York, in the autumn of on probation”). challenged wealthy nations to provide the money 1971. By the time authorities regained control four Berkman subsequently worked at a drug that would make affordable HIV drugs available to days later, 10 prison employees and 29 prisoners addiction clinic in the poverty stricken South all who need them. had died. Bronx area of New York city and as medical director Two years later when members of the American of a skilled nursing facility for people with AIDS Staggering audaciousness Indian Movement seized the small town of and mental health comorbidities. He returned The audaciousness was staggering; the fact that it Wounded Knee in South Dakota for 71 days, he to Columbia University for postgraduate work, came to be is without precedent. The price of a first and his wife slipped past a siege by federal agents eventually joining the faculty as vice chair of the line HIV treatment plummeted from $12 000 to less to provide medical care. department of epidemiology at the Mailman School than $100 a year in developing countries. In nations Members of the and the of Public Health. where people taking antiretroviral once could Weather Underground attempted to rob a Brink’s His work with HIV took him to Africa and the literally be counted on fingers, the number receiving armoured car of $1.6m in October 1981. Two police Caribbean, where the epidemic was raging, and treatment now approaches four million. Although officers and a guard were killed in the shooting. access to treatment was something that only an many individuals and organisations worked to The groups had a history of robbery, bombing, and elite few within those societies could even dream achieve this goal, Berkman’s role was crucial. killing law enforcement officers. about. “Alan Berkman was a deeply committed He was frustrated by the 1998 International humanitarian who put the needs of world’s Gunshot wound AIDS Conference in Barcelona, where there was no disenfranchised above his own,” said Salim S A witness claimed that Berkman had treated one thought of bringing to Africa the then relatively new Abdool Karim, director of the Centre for the AIDS of the gang members for a gunshot wound, but and expensive HIV drugs that had revolutionised Programme of Research in South Africa. “He leaves the doctor refused to cooperate with authorities in treatment in the US and Europe. A visit to the an indelible imprint on the global effort to make the investigation. He was charged as an accessory preserved Nazi concentration camp at Dachau a AIDS treatment accessible to all by his passionate after the fact to the crime, becoming, according few days after the conference would crystallise his advocacy, his selfless caring, and his deep to his lawyers, the only US physician so indicted commitment that something must be done. compassion for the poor who were struggling to get since 1865 when Samuel Mudd treated the broken Asia Russell was a community organiser and AIDS treatment.” leg of , the fugitive assassin of AIDS activist with ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Berkman leaves his wife, Barbara Zeller, and two President Abraham Lincoln. Power) Philadelphia when she first met Berkman daughters. Berkman was released on bail pending his a few months later at the initial planning meeting Bob Roehr trial and simply disappeared. He later surfaced of what was to become Health GAP (Global Access Alan Berkman, AIDS activist (b 1945; q 1971, as part of an armed robbery of a supermarket in Project). She later went to work for the organisation, Columbia, New York), died 5 June 2009 when he . When authorities caught up with him where she serves as director of international policy. succumbed to lymphoma while undergoing an and a companion in Pennsylvania in May 1985, You felt immediately that you were in the experimental stem cell therapy to treat the disease. they seized a pistol, shotgun, and 100 pounds presence of someone who was both a visionary Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3245

404 BMJ | 15 august 2009 | Volume 339