2004 AIDS Symposium Keynote Address

Jon Cohen

Jon Cohen has covered biomedicine for 15 years, traveling extensively through the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Mexico. Cohen began writing for Science in 1990, becoming one of the world's leading HIV/AIDS reporters. In addition to reporting on a wide range of scientific and medical topics for Science, Cohen has done indepth, investigative stories about the National Institutes of Health, biodefense, tobacco industry funding of science, the troubled vaccine industry, credit battles, the genomics revolution, and the science press itself. He also has written for the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Technology Review, Talk, Discover, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Smithsonian, Slate, New Republic, Surfer, and other publications. He has appeared on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, NPR’s Science Friday with Ira Flatow, and several other broadcast media. In 2003, Cohen received a mini-fellowship from the Kaiser Family Foundation to research a series for Science magazine about HIV/AIDS in Asia. Cohen in 1998 received a Sloan Foundation grant to complete Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine, which was published by W.W. Norton in January 2001. Shots in the Dark won the Science and Society journalism award from the National Association of Science Writers. His 1997 Science article about the rise and fall of an AIDS research program in the former Zaire won the international health reporting award from the Pan American Health Organization. In 2005, Houghton Mifflin plans to publish Cohen’s new book, Coming to Term: Myths, Mysteries and the latest Science of Miscarriage. From 1986-1990 he was senior editor at the City Paper in Washington, D.C. He earned a B.A. in 1981 from the University of California, San Diego, where he majored in science writing. Cohen lives in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California, with his wife, a TV documentary producer, and their three children.

Mr. Cohen will deliver the AOA Keynote Lecture to open the 2004 AIDS Symposium on Wednesday November 17, at 5:00 PM, Basic Sciences Auditorium. The title of his lecture is "Postcards from the Edge: A Critical Appraisal of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Treatment Efforts Around the World ".