Researchers Journeying to International AIDS Conference among those Dead in Malaysia Jet Shoot-Down

There were no known survivors among the 298 people on the flight bound for Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam on Thursday. As many as 100 leading HIV/AIDS researchers and advocates were confirmed on the flight, disrupting plans to effectively provide new research, funding and future treatments that could help destroy symptoms of the virus. Many were on their way to the International AIDS Conference that begins this weekend in Melbourne, Australia.

"There's a huge feeling of sadness here, people are in floods of tears in the corridors," said Clive Aspin, a veteran HIV researcher who attended the pre-conference plenary session in Sydney, via the Guardian Australia. "These people were the best and the brightest, the ones who had dedicated their whole careers to fighting this terrible virus. It's devastating."

World-renowned AIDS researcher Joep Lange, a leader of the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development, has also been confirmed dead following the shoot down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

"His loss casts a pall over the International AIDS Conference just getting underway in Melbourne," said Daniel R. Kuritzkes, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, via the Washington Post.

Shawn Jain, spokesman for the Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, said late Thursday by e-mail: "The conference already brings out a lot of emotion in attendees because so many have been lost to HIV/AIDS (and the global epidemic, of course, continues), so to have this happen will only compound the sense of loss that many cope with at this event. To hear that Joep Lange, a former president of the organization that puts on the conference (the International AIDS Society) perished in the crash is especially devastating."

The conference is likely to proceed as scheduled, according to officials.