Former SPH Doctor, AIDS Activist Dies in Crash

Dr. Jonathan M. Mann '69, a former School of Public Health (SPH) professor who crusaded for AIDS activism and emphasized the relationship between health and human rights, died in Wednesday's crash of Swissair Flight 111 off the Canadian coast. He was 51.

Mann's colleagues said his initiative and dedication in AIDS-related work and his constant campaign for human rights made him stand out personally and professionally.

"Without illusions about the difficulties to be overcome, he constantly strived to change the world to advance human rights and to improve public health," University Provost Harvey V. Fineberg '67 wrote in an e-mail message. Fineberg was SPH dean from Mann's appointment in 1990 until 1997.

Throughout his life, Mann was "a founder and innovator," Fineberg said.

Over the course of his career, Mann founded or was a founding director of four different public health programs.

In 1986, he became the founding director of the Global Programme on AIDS (GPA), a program under the umbrella of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Under Mann's direction, the GPA evolved from a two-person operation to one of WHO's largest programs, with an annual budget in excess of $100 million.

He left WHO in 1990 over a dispute with the director-general over global AIDS strategy, and moved to SPH.

"His main goal was to promote human rights and the dignity of all people, and to really change the way the world works," said Mary Pat Kieffer, administrator of Harvard's Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, which Mann founded and directed from 1993 to January 1998.

Before he founded the Bagnoud Center, Mann was director of the International AIDS Center of the Harvard AIDS Institute.

Bringing Humanity to Harvard

Mann also strove to bring his commitment to human rights both to his own students and to those throughout the SPH.

He taught a popular undergraduate course, General Education 103, "AIDS, Health and Human Rights."

"When he taught his undergraduate course, he really hoped to infect people with a desire to change the world," Kieffer said.

And apparently, he succeeded.

"One summer, I encountered an undergraduate who had taken his course and asked [her] how she had liked it," Fineberg said. "She looked at me and said simply, 'It changed my life."

A few years before he joined the SPH faculty, Mann was invited by the graduates to give a commencement speech. Due to his belief that health and human rights were inextricably connected, he suggested that the school distribute copies of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights along with the graduates' diplomas.

The tradition continues today and has spread to other schools of public health.

Mann left Harvard in January to once again start up a program; this time, he was to be founding Dean of a public health school at Allegheny University of the Health Sciences.

However, "Allegheny had developed financial problems," Kieffer said, "and it seemed clear to [Mann] that he wouldn't have the opportunities there that he had hoped for."

"He was heading to Geneva to explore other job options," she said.

After those at the Geneva WHO headquarters heard that Mann and his wife, Mary Lou Clements-Mann, an AIDS vaccine researcher at Johns Hopkins, had died in the crash, they gathered to react to the news in the same auditorium where Mann had announced his resignation eight years earlier.

"I will never forget the moment when he walked through those doors at the back of this room, and the entire staff of GPA was there, applauding and making a corridor for him to walk through," said Daniel J.M. Tarantola, an SPH colleague who will soon become an adviser to the new WHO director.

"[They were] leading him away from this organization, which he cherished, and into a new life and new challenges at [SPH]," said Tarantola, who is also SPH lecturer on Population and International Health and acting director of the Bagnoud Center.

Mann's career in international health started in 1975 with a post as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

He then became a state epidemiologist and assistant director of the health department in New Mexico.

From 1984 to 1986, Mann was the founder and director of Project SIDA, aZaire-based AIDS research project, under theauspices of the CDC. He moved to WHO in 1986.

"He really put AIDS on the global agenda whencountries didn't want to deal with AIDS," Kieffersaid.

Larry Kessler, executive director of theMassachusetts AIDS Action Committee, describedMann as "a true public servant, friend of thedispossessed, and hero in the worldwide fightagainst AIDS."

"Jonathan was among the most effectiveproponents of a worldwide effort to prevent AIDS,"said Fineberg, "explaining over and over that AIDSwas everyone's problem and that the epidemic wouldnot be truly solved anywhere until it was solvedeverywhere."

Mann is survived by his mother, Ida Mann, ofNewton; and by his children, Lydia of Boston;Naomi of Washington, D.C.; and Aaron, a PeaceCorps volunteer in Burkina Faso.

Other Harvard-affiliated crash victims includePierce J. Gerety, a 1966 Kennedy School graduateand a 1971 Law School graduate. Gerety, aBrooklyn, N.Y. resident, was the director ofAfrican Great Lakes operations for the UnitedNation's High Commissioner of Refugees. Doug W.Fine, a 1990 Business School graduate fromFremont, Calif. who was vice president for digitalimaging and retail sales at the SanDiskCorporation in Sunnyvale, Calif., also died in thecrash.ReutersA wreath for JONATHAN M. MANN '69 sits underthe lighthouse yesterday at Peggy's Cove, NovaScotia, Canada.

"He really put AIDS on the global agenda whencountries didn't want to deal with AIDS," Kieffersaid.

Larry Kessler, executive director of theMassachusetts AIDS Action Committee, describedMann as "a true public servant, friend of thedispossessed, and hero in the worldwide fightagainst AIDS."

"Jonathan was among the most effectiveproponents of a worldwide effort to prevent AIDS,"said Fineberg, "explaining over and over that AIDSwas everyone's problem and that the epidemic wouldnot be truly solved anywhere until it was solvedeverywhere."

Mann is survived by his mother, Ida Mann, ofNewton; and by his children, Lydia of Boston;Naomi of Washington, D.C.; and Aaron, a PeaceCorps volunteer in Burkina Faso.

Other Harvard-affiliated crash victims includePierce J. Gerety, a 1966 Kennedy School graduateand a 1971 Law School graduate. Gerety, aBrooklyn, N.Y. resident, was the director ofAfrican Great Lakes operations for the UnitedNation's High Commissioner of Refugees. Doug W.Fine, a 1990 Business School graduate fromFremont, Calif. who was vice president for digitalimaging and retail sales at the SanDiskCorporation in Sunnyvale, Calif., also died in thecrash.ReutersA wreath for JONATHAN M. MANN '69 sits underthe lighthouse yesterday at Peggy's Cove, NovaScotia, Canada.