***image2***Winning a prestigious award for AIDS research isn't enough for scientist Bette Korber. She won't be happy until she's cured it.
In 1981, MTV was born, Bob Marley died and Bette Korber was a Caltech grad student fond of hiking and Shotokan Karate. For reasons that remain inexplicable-call it a hunch or female intuition-that year Korber became fixated on a mysterious illness called "gay cancer" making the rounds in newspaper headlines. At the time, 23-year-old Korber was studying immunology in mice and knew neither what "gay cancer" was nor that she would become a leading researcher of the illness, later labeled AIDS. After all, just a handful of years earlier, Korber was an English major at California State University, Long Beach. As her college years progressed, she switched over to chemistry but usually studied obscure subjects that never directly involved humans, a circumstance that dismayed her.
But before long, the discovery of "gay cancer" not only changed the course of Korber's work but also her life.
Today, Korber is a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist who has determined that the onset of the AIDS pandemic occurred around 1930. Her finding unglued the theory that the virus traveled from monkeys to humans via contaminated oral polio vaccine in 1950s Central Africa. In addition to such groundbreaking research, Korber is an authority on identifying the genetic traits of HIV
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after its transmission from mother to child and oversees a Los Alamos HIV sequence database on which AIDS researchers worldwide depend. For her efforts, on Nov. 8, Korber will receive the Department of Energy's $50,000 Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award.
While Korber considers the award a tremendous achievement, in many ways it is merely a means to an end.
No matter how many awards she receives, Korber remains slightly restless, slightly discontent. She has yet to realize her dream: development of an AIDS vaccine.
That end can be traced back to a vow Korber made when she first learned of "gay cancer."
It was during a party in graduate school that Korber met a man
she remembers as "tall, elegant and graceful." Eventually, she would invite the man-whom she only wishes to identify as Brian-to share a house Caltech had rented to her. A physicist from Britain, Brian "could walk into a bar and have everyone within listening range caring deeply about the origins of the universe, the mass of a neutrino, string
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theory," Korber says. "Even if you hated the very thought of physics, Brian would have you thinking otherwise after a few minutes of conversation. It was remarkable."
Korber's husband, James Theiler, who shared the house with Korber and Brian, remembers him as "a colorful character, delightful storyteller, a jester who enjoyed nothing more than scandalizing his more diligent colleagues with outrageous opinions or by acting like he never did any work. He is someone who was as truly amused by the absurdities of life as he was enchanted by the beauty of physics."
Overall, Korber says she, her then husband-to-be and Brian became "very close and had wonderful years of arguing about life, science, politics-everything." Brian even
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became a minister so he could marry Korber and Theiler during their 1988 wedding.
Korber lived with Brian for five years before he was diagnosed as HIV-positive-one of the first cases diagnosed in the Pasadena area.
And while Korber remembers Brian for arranging an "elegant ceremony," she thoroughly remembers what he taught her about AIDS. "He learned everything he could, finding out it was an immune disease and how it was spreading, how it was a problem in Africa," she says. "He was doing a lot of AIDS education that kept me awake." To Brian, Korber made the type of promise depicted in many a Mafia or Kung Fu flick: She would get his soon-to-be killer. She would do so by dedicating her life to researching AIDS.
In 1988, Korber headed East to Harvard to do postdoctoral work
on AIDS-as Caltech provided no opportunities to study the disease at the time. Korber stayed at Harvard for two years. From there, she headed to LANL. In 1991, Brian died. Korber kept
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working. At the lab, she oversaw an HIV sequence database that would lead to a landmark discovery. Not-for-profit and accessible to all HIV researchers worldwide who need it, the database "assembles all the sequence data in the world," Korber says. "Everybody who is infected with HIV has a different response to the virus, so we've now got a collection of a 100,000 HIV sequences that we've gotten from all over the world that we curate and organize for the scientific community, and we also have a collection of all of the immune responses to HIV."
Using the database, Korber determined that AIDS first began to diverge in humans in 1930, a morsel of information she may never have arrived at had it not been for her interdisciplinary skills. "By making computations and using them very effectively, she was able to see the evolution of the AIDS virus and how it first originated and mutated and diffused in humans," says Ari Patrinos, director for biological and environmental research for the Department of Energy. "Had she not used computation that probably would have taken much longer to occur or not have even happened yet."
Theiler, a physicist, says of his wife's interdisciplinary work, "Unlike most biologists, she understands math-on both a technical and an intuitive level. She has contributed to the
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quantitative understanding of biological experiments and has pushed their design so that useful quantitative results would come out."
While a vaccine was Korber's aim in pinpointing when AIDS diverged in humans, her finding unintentionally disputed the theory that AIDS entered humans in the 1950s through contaminated
oral polio vaccine. "My research is a small part of the research against that theory, but the stronger arguments are things like the people who made that vaccine didn't use the type of monkeys that HIV's cousins are found in," she says. "It's found in chimpanzees that were not in the area where the vaccine was given."
In 2000, Korber's research concerning AIDS evolution was covered extensively-in both scientific and non-scientific publications such as Newsweek.
For her, it was the lowest point in her career.
As a result of her finding that AIDS had diverged in humans in
1930, Korber became ensnared in a dispute she felt was irrelevant to her research goals. "To me it was kind of a side issue, but it got a lot of press because the polio thing got a lot of press," she says.
Further, some of the press was critical. For example, in the July 2000 issue of the Idaho Observer, Dr. Len Horowitz
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writes about Korber's findings on the evolution of AIDS. "Not only does this study by Korba [sic] et al. not disprove this possibility (that
AIDS entered humans via tainted polio vaccine), but typical of counterintelligence propaganda campaigns sponsored by the British and American governments, these pronouncements are deceptive and distract us from the gravest issues at hand."
Edward Hooper, author of a book called
The River
that promoted the polio theory, also criticized Korber. A letter he wrote from Somerset, England, on Feb. 6, 2000, is published on the web site of the University of Wollongong in Australia. "Dr. Korber has apparently used 'the world's fastest super-computer' to calculate a date of 1930, plus or minus 20 years, for the introduction to humans of the virus which spawned AIDS," Hooper states. "However, Korber's research is theoretical and based on certain assumptions. One key assumption is that the transfer of chimpanzee SIV to humans involved a single event, perhaps a hunter becoming infected via the blood of a chimp. Dr. Korber also subscribes to the hypothesis proposed by Dr. Beatrice Hahn's group that the chimp in question was a 'central chimpanzee'…This, too, is unproven."
Jon Cohen covered the controversy in Science magazine. He says: "The debate with Hooper-in some ways, it was interesting. I think where Hooper's argument starts to fall
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apart is, if you look at other episodes where we know contamination occurred, and we know it led
to disease in humans, the evidence in those cases is so convincing you look at that and know exactly what happened."
Korber becomes emotional when she discusses some of the consequences of the Hooper controversy. Voice rising, she says, "People were afraid [to take the polio vaccine because they thought] it might have HIV in it." And, according to Korber, the result has been that while polio had almost been globally eradicated (there were only a few hundred cases left), it continues to thrive. "I think it's really tragic," she says.
The controversy may have been seen as a distraction by Korber, but it did not, ultimately, impair her credibility.
If 2000 was the nadir of Korber's career, 2004 has arguably
been a highlight. Perhaps no achievement has been as great as the Lawrence Award, an honor she learned of on what seemed an
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ordinary August day. It was a day in which Korber followed the same routine she always did-rising hours before dawn, dreading the load of administrative work that she knew awaited her at the lab and would delay her from researching. Sitting in her wing of the lab, a plywood structure intended to be temporary but now a permanent workspace, Korber recalls learning about the win. Her quiet and airy manner of speaking conjures a
subdued Marilyn Monroe. Korber's personality-which some characterize as aloof upon first meeting her-can also be compared to a celebrity's, whether a movie star's or a politician's. "She looks very stern and very serious," says Beatrice Hahn, a University of Alabama at Birmingham virologist, who has known Korber for 15 years. "But, once you talk to her, that kind of dissolves, and she becomes a very personable and warm person." Science magazine correspondent Cohen says Korber is almost impossible to interview. "Bette's really careful. She…can hardly say a sentence without putting five qualifiers in it."
Wearing a fuzzy pink sweater that draws out the red in her thick brown mane, Korber speaks openly, albeit pensively, about winning the Lawrence. "It has a lot of meanings for me, but, one, I just feel incredibly honored and happy about it," she says. "It's
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an extraordinary award, and Lawrence was an extraordinary scientist, so to have something come through that lineage feels really, really good."
Established in 1959, the Lawrence Award was named after Ernest Orlando Lawrence, creator of the cyclotron, a particle accelerator. The Department of Energy distributes Lawrence Awards in seven categories under the umbrella field of atomic energy. Korber won in the life sciences category. In addition to winning $50,000, Korber will travel to
the District of Columbia, where she will receive a gold medal and a citation signed by Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham.
John Mokili, a postdoctoral research fellow at LANL, wrote a report with Korber called "The Spread of HIV in Africa." His office is a corridor's walk away from Korber's, and he speaks just as softly as the woman he calls his mentor, only with English accented from the Democratic Republic of Congo. "We are surprised by (her winning the award), but, honestly, we're not surprised," says Mokili of Korber's prize. "It's something that
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we've probably been waiting for."
Given the summer LANL had-missing files, a laser injuring an intern-one can imagine that many a lab employee exhaled upon learning that Korber, along with two other lab scientists, received
the Lawrence Award. Among the relieved is Brian T Foley, an HIV researcher. "I'm proud of her for it," he says. "This is the second major award she's gotten; she became a lab fellow last year. She's one of few women fellows at the lab."
During countless instances in her career, Korber recalls being the only woman in a room. "There's an attrition as you go to higher levels," she explains. However, Korber says she's seen an increasing number of "really fine women in my particular field." Despite being part of a sizeable minority in the science world, Korber doesn't downplay her femininity-hence, her fuzzy pink sweater and a bright blue, beaded anklet she's wearing. "She always has these flowing dresses and skirts," says Hahn. This year, Korber was one of two women granted the Lawrence Award.
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She initially concealed the news, as she was told not to tell anyone. But she immediately discussed the win with her family because she wanted
them to know her intentions for the $50,000 purse. "I always wanted to thank HIV positive people who give their blood for my work," Korber says. "I'm going to split my award with orphans in South Africa." Korber's husband supports the decision. "By giving some money from an award that she got because of her research, she can make a tangible and immediate difference, and she can know that her research directly enabled that," Theiler says. Korber admits the money is her favorite aspect of the Lawrence Award. "It has given me the freedom to help directly. My sister, some friends and some colleagues at the lab have also decided to pitch in. So far, we have $31,000 lined up, and I think it will be more before we are through."
The devastation AIDS is causing in Africa is one of Korber's
greatest concerns. Native African Mokili says AIDS "has been affecting the whole continent. The great majority of people who are infected live in Africa." Korber says Americans only have a vague sense of how AIDS has ravaged the continent. "They don't understand what the extent of the problem is in sub-Saharan Africa," she says. "When
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you have a nation like Botswana, which is the most highly infected nation on earth, it depletes the workforce, the people raising children." Korber believes that "everything we can do, we need to because it's a moral responsibility.
Actually, it's more than a moral responsibility because the economic impact could be destabilizing. When places are cast into poverty that's got to have ramifications, and I don't think we know what they're going to be yet."
Though the international spread of AIDS worries Korber, she believes nationally AIDS education is lacking. "We're not doing enough in our own nation with education. We're not reaching out to people who need it. We're failing certain communities." Korber is particularly concerned about how sex education has increasingly become centered on abstinence. "Abstinence is great, but it's not going to work for everybody. Accessing information about condoms is really important. I think you have to be more realistic."
Both the spread of AIDS and the lack of education on the disease disturbs Korber, but she says the primary struggle of her work is researching daily with no assurance of finding a cure. "You figure your primary research goal is a vaccine, and you know you may never get one."
But Patrinos, of the Department of Energy, is hopeful Korber's research will someday stop AIDS. "A lot of her studies will help build the case of some way to combat the
disease, whether it's a vaccine or antiviral medication,"he says. "What she has done by giving us a very solid understanding of how the
disease unfolds will shed light on the mysteries of its actions. It's in a sense understanding the past can do something about the future."
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As a whole, the scientific community overwhelmingly believes Korber's work will somehow halt AIDS. Korber's work "already had major impact" says Hahn. "It had its major impact on timing the onset of AIDS, and it will have a major impact on the area of AIDS vaccine development."
Despite the faith fellow scientists have in her, Korber says sometimes it is difficult to believe in a positive outcome. "Just the psychological aspect that this may never work gets a lot of people
discouraged who have devoted all of their energy and all of their work to trying to make this happen," she says. Though Korber sometimes gets discouraged, it's unlikely she will falter, a character trait she attributes to her personal catalyst. "I'm doing this for Brian," she says. "Brian teaching me about AIDS gave me a way to help people. It was a direction I wanted to go in. If we get a vaccine, that'll be the best thing I can imagine. That would be fabulous."
