Dr. John Phair remembered as a pioneer of HIV and AIDS research
CHICAGO — Dr. John Phair, a pioneering Northwestern University doctor who spearheaded groundbreaking discoveries in the fight against HIV and AIDS, has died at the age of 89.
“He was the number one researcher of HIV and AIDS in the Chicago area, in the Midwest,” Dr. Robert Murphy said. “The impact was so tremendous.”
Dr. Robert Murphy was Phair’s mentee and serves as the John Phillip Phair Professor of Infectious Diseases at Northwestern.
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“You think back to 1981, there was a lot of hysteria, a lot of stigmatization, a lot of very irrational thinking. Some hospitals were not letting patients with HIV even come into the hospitals,” Murphy said. “He really calmed everybody down. He said, ‘Let’s follow the science.’”
Phair led the first and largest investigation of HIV, the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study, which gathered critical data from 1987 to 2012. He also established the Chicago AIDS Clinical Trials Unit, which evaluated HIV treatment.
“His work, really from start to finish, is what helped us understand: What is HIV? What does it do to people?” said Dr. Catherine Creticos, Director of Infectious Diseases at Howard Brown Health.
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Phair was also dad to Chicago indie rock icon Liz Phair, who says he was not afraid to go where others wouldn’t to help people.
“You have a front row seat to someone who’s dealing with the AIDS pandemic – some of the hardest times in our culture and, you know, the patients in their lives. He’s face-to-face with death, and that just makes a certain kind of character that my father had,” Phair said. “He was my hero.”
Dr. Phair died peacefully February 19th. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his wife, Nancy, his son, Phillip, and three grandchildren.
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