The following originally appeared in the Spring 2002 issue of The Pulteney St. Survey.
Dr. Chris Beyrer '81 is director of The Johns Hopkins University Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Program, where he is responsible for educating developing-country scientists and health organizations on preventative measures and research methodologies regarding HIV/AIDS. He also serves as Senior Scientific Liaison for the US Government supported HIV Vaccine Trials Network, making him the senior scientist for HIV/AIDS vaccine research for Africa and Asia. Before accepting the position in 1997, Beyrer spent five years in Thailand as part of a Johns Hopkins team of scientists working to halt the spread of AIDS. Thailand's story is one of only a handful of successes in the bloody war on AIDS. Beyrer's experiences in Thailand reinforced his belief that the spread of HIV/AIDS is profoundly impacted by a complex weave of social and political factors that vary from country to country. If you follow the tracks of heroin sprouting from the poppy fields of Afghanistan and Burma, and trace the ensuing corridors of violence and slave trafficking, you also trace AIDS. Just as there is an ideal viral environment for the spread of HIV between individuals (exchange of blood, semen, vaginal secretions), there is an ideal socio-political circumstance for the swelling of infections within a country (war, poverty, narcotics). By becoming an expert on the scientific, Beyrer has become an expert on the socio-political.
Beyrer's 1998 book, War in the Blood: Sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast Asia, chronicles the success of Thailand's program and the different challenges faced by her neighbors: Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Vietnam, and China's southeastern region of Yunnan. Part travelogue and part admonition, Beyrer conveys the beauty of the people and cultures as well as the brutality of the powerful and the desolation of the disenfranchised. The strength behind the book is due in large part to Beyrer's exhaustive knowledge of the patterns of HIV/AIDS and his almost intuitive grasp of the various cultures he describes.
Beyrer's interest in the East started as a teenager East Islip, New York. He was a voracious reader who, as a middle school student, studied Western philosophy, reading Nietzsche and Freud, Russian novels and Virginia Woolf. By the time he was 16, he says, "I knew truth was not going to be found in the West." Around that time, Beyrer says, "I found a skinny book for sale in the basement of Penn Station. You could buy books there for 25 cents. The book was The Myth of Freedom by J. Krishnamurti, and it changed my life." Beyrer began studying Buddhism in earnest.
Hobart College was a natural choice for Beyrer. His father, Dr. Charles R. Beyrer, graduated from Hobart in 1956. "When I went to Hobart," Beyrer explains, "I really didn't know where I was going, but it felt like the right place for me." In the late '70s, when Beyrer matriculated, he says that although the country was moving toward a more conservative climate, "…the Hobart and William Smith faculty were free-thinking and accessible. I had all these varied interests. I was in the history department, pre-med and anthropology. I was also just coming out as a gay man and I was able to live an openly gay life on campus and not be hassled. In retrospect, if I had decided to go to college in New York City, I would be dead now. Of my circle of friends in New York, only two of us are left."
In addition to providing a welcoming environment, the Colleges gave him an opportunity to study abroad. "My term in Sri Lanka was the first time I had lived abroad and I loved it so much I stayed for four months. I became a Buddhist, formally, in Sri Lanka."
After graduating cum laude with a major in Asian studies and anthropology, Beyrer traveled to Hemis Monastery in northern India. "I wasn't sure what I wanted to do but I did know I wanted to go further into Buddhism." Beyrer spent time in a refugee community near the Tibetan border, developing a close relationship with His Holiness the 14th Drukchen Rinpoche. "Drukchen kept asking me when I was going to return to America and go to medical school," Beyrer explains. I had no interest then, I suppose because I come from such a strong medical family. But the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that I was not of much use to the people around me. There was a huge TB epidemic, vitamin deficiencies, severe malnutrition."
Beyrer moved back and forth between India and New York City, working odd jobs and applying to medical school. In 1984, just as the AIDS epidemic was surfacing, he entered SUNY Brooklyn and Kings County Hospital. "I remember we didn't have a test for AIDS, that it was just a clinical diagnosis," he says. "We just didn't know a lot. In my freshman and sophomore years of medical school, I remember that it wasn't even clear that the virus could spread from mother to child. It was scary taking care of patients. We were all young and inexperienced, clumsy. We were in one of the poorest boroughs with a mayor, Ed Koch, and a president, Ronald Regan, who would not recognize the severity of the situation. King County Hospital had 3,000 beds with no funding and no staff. The nurses who also worked in private hospitals actually stole supplies and brought them to Kings County so we could have things like bandages. I will say this-the experience certainly prepared me for working in third world hospitals."
Although he had originally been interested in primary care, it became increasingly clear to Beyrer that public health was his calling. While in medical school, Beyrer fell in love with Ed Luther, an actor. "Ed and I were living in an okay neighborhood but it was a tense time. New York City was very racially polarized. One night, Ed and I were walking back to our apartment when we were attacked by five men. We were badly beaten. We decided that we had to get out of the City, so I took a one-year internship in Wisconsin and we moved there. It was at the end of that year that we suspected that Ed had AIDS. I had been worried about him for a while. We would both get colds and his would last for two months. The first real manifestation of the virus in Ed was mental. He went through profound personality changes because of a fungus growing in his brain."
Beyrer took a leave of absence to take care of Luther and they returned to New York, where, Beyrer says, "We started the process of dying." By January of 1990, Luther had stabilized enough to allow him to travel, so Beyrer and Luther went back and forth to Europe for six months with Beyrer working odd medical jobs to pay expenses.
Beyrer had heard about a residency program at Johns Hopkins in preventative medicine and public health. He was accepted and the two moved to Baltimore. Luther's health, however, continued to decline. "They were tumultuous years. I was in a residency, moonlighting in two AIDS clinics, and taking care of Ed. In 1991, he died."
Beyrer took one year off from AIDS. He moved to Jamaica to work on polio vaccine trials and then worked on a meningitis vaccine trial among Apache infants. "After residency training, I didn't know what I wanted to do," Beyrer says. "I heard that Johns Hopkins had received a grant to begin preparations for HIV vaccine trials. They needed someone to go to Thailand in two weeks. I packed two bags and stayed for five years."
The move from Thailand back to Baltimore and his new position as director of the Fogarty program have given Beyrer an opportunity to affect more change. He uses the basic principles of Buddhism as a guide. "Buddhism has remained a hugely important orientation in my life," he says. "I manage and run big programs with large staffs and budgets. To do that, I always ask myself, 'What is my motivation? Is it to relieve suffering or is it personal?' Right now, we're negotiating with pharmaceutical companies, the government, and our partner countries to test new vaccines. It's important to operate delicately and on behalf of the greater good."
By devoting himself to public health and to the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, Beyrer is actively working to relieve the suffering of millions. "I think being around death is an accelerant," he says. "No one has an endless lease on life and there's no point in waiting."
Chris Beyrer's book, War in the Blood: Sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast Asia, is available through the College Store.
Contribution: Director of The Johns Hopkins University Fogarty AIDS Program, Senior Scientific Liaison for the U.S. Government-supported HIV Vaccine Trials Network, Medical Advisor to the Dalai Lama, Expert on HIV/AIDS in Africa and Asia
Hometown: New York, N.Y.
College Activities: Farm House, Phi Beta Kappa
Major: History
Other Education: SUNY Brooklyn