Not Knowing Leads to Discovery

February 1, 1981, Atlanta, Georgia: Sandra Ford, a drug technician with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), received a telephone call from Dr. Jeffrey Green. The New York-based infectious disease specialist wanted a supply of pentamidine isethionate, which was used to treat infections so rare that only the government supplied the drug.

Green wanted pentamidine to treat two cases of pneumonia caused by pneumocystis carinii, which was only seen in those with severely impaired immune systems – usually cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Several other physicians had recently seen the same pattern of immune suppression and pneumocystis infection and had been able to find an explanation for the breakdown of the immune response (X-ray exposure or a drug reaction).

When Ford asked Green the cause of the infection in his patients, Green replied, "I don't know." Ford was annoyed and wondered why Green didn't check the patients' charts to find the cause of the immune suppression. But Green had checked: he didn't know.

Green went on to become one of the co-discoverers of AIDS.

It wasn't until one MD was able to admit ignorance that anybody realized they were dealing with a previously unreported disease.

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