LGBTQIA+ History Month 2023: Joseph Sonnabend (1933 – 2021)
To celebrate LGBTQIA+ History Month 2023, we are showcasing profiles for some of the incredible microbiologists and virologists from history who were part of the LGBTQIA+ community. It is important for this community to claim their past, celebrate their present and create their future.
Joseph Sonnabend was a South African physician and scientist in the field of AIDS research. He moved to colonial Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) at a young age, and returned to Johannesburg for education at the University of the Witwatersrand, then moved to the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh, where he trained in infectious diseases. He accepted a position at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and moved to New York City in 1969, the same year as the infamous Stonewall riots. Following this, Sonnabend decided to live as openly gay.
Sonnabend opened his own practice for sexually transmitted infections in 1978 and is widely considered as ‘the first AIDS doctor’. He was known for treating all his patients with compassion, being on call at all hours of the day and visiting patients when they needed him most, including on their deathbeds. Most of his patients did not have medical insurance, and often he wouldn’t invoice them. He was greatly respected among the gay community in New York was renowned for protecting and promoting patients’ rights.
Sonnabend also conducted some of the earliest research into AIDS. He helped found the AIDS Medical Foundation, known today as amfAR, one of the largest funding organisations in the world for AIDS research and advocacy. He educational background in microbiology and virology meant he was able to run samples from patients himself to identify AIDS-related diseases in gay men, and he established collaborations with researchers around the world.
He was also seen as a controversial figure by many. He was one of the first to suggest safer sex as a method for preventing AIDS, which was seen as ‘limiting sexual freedom’. Furthermore, he put forward a multifactorial model for AIDS, in which he claimed it could be caused by a multitude of different factors, and many criticised him for being much too slow in accepting HIV as the cause of AIDS, although he did begin to come around to this. However, throughout his entire life he worked tirelessly for his patients, and everything he did had their best interests in mind.