Drugs produced dramatic change in HIV patient

Tiko Kerr was at death's door in January 2006 when a new treatment was begun

Darah Hansen, Vancouver Sun
Published: Wednesday, May 02, 2007

The human immunodeficiency virus could have killed Vancouver artist Tiko Kerr 20 years ago, just as it claimed so many other promising lives.

Instead, his successful battle to live is now propelling him on a whirlwind world tour, talking to drug researchers, doctors and scientists about his story of survival and the two controversial AIDS drugs that helped him beat the odds.

"I've really come to the conclusion that the worse you have to go through, the greater the reward," Kerr says of his dramatic change in fortune.

The tour began in December, when Kerr, just shy of the one-year anniversary of his initial treatment with TMC114 and TMC125 as part of a small clinical trial at St. Paul's Hospital, travelled to New Jersey where he was invited to speak at the corporate headquarters of pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, and its subsidiary, Tibotec, which developed the two drugs.

Colouring his talk with a mini-retrospective of his paintings over 25 years, Kerr related his own sometimes desperate struggle with the virus since his diagnosis in the mid-1980s.

"You kind of lived your life in gulps," he said of his mindset at the time he was told he was HIV-positive.

He also told of his life-and-death fight with his own government in order to gain access to the drugs. (...)

Click here to read the article