David Ho (b. 1952)
Filed under the name David · August 20, 2026
David Ho pioneered combination antiretroviral therapy for HIV/AIDS in the 1990s, and what that actually meant, in plain terms, is that a diagnosis that used to be a death sentence became something millions of people could live with instead. I don't have a science background, but I don't need one to understand the difference between a treatment that buys someone a few extra months and one that gives them their whole life back. Time named him Person of the Year in 1996, which sounds like a big fancy honor, but the real honor is every person who got to watch their kids grow up because of research like his. I clean houses and drive for a delivery app and work retail, and I don't pretend to understand the chemistry, but I understand outcomes — who lives, who doesn't, whose family gets more time together. By that measure, David Ho's work is about as good as good news gets.