The Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS community mourns the loss of Robert (Bob) J. Levine, MD, Emeritus Professor of Internal Medicine (1934- 2020). Bob was the director of CIRA's Law, Policy and Ethics (LPE) Core between 2008 and 2012. Under his leadership, the LPE Core supported research focused on law, policy, structure/context or ethics and provided consultations to CIRA scientists on HIV-related policy and law and their research implications to policy, practice and subsequent research. He also moderated CIRA's Criminalization of HIV Exposure Work Group, a multidisciplinary collaboration of policy makers, advocates, researchers, public health officials, and other stakeholders that aimed to examine critical public health, ethical, and legal issues around criminalization through research and other activities.
Below are personal statements about Bob from Dini Harsono, former assistant director of the LPE Core, and Kaveh Khoshnood, Associate Professor at Yale School of Public Health and former associate director of the LPE Core.
Dini Harsono:
I was privileged to work with Bob and Kaveh Khoshnood on various LPE and criminalization projects through 2016 prior to Bob’s retirement. Bob was well known for his influential work in human subjects research and was very generous with his time and expertise. He invited me to join his evening seminar on the ethics of research involving human subjects at the Yale School of Medicine. The sessions were always well attended and generated wonderful, friendly discussions as he made sure everyone had an opportunity to participate. He will be dearly missed.
Kaveh Khoshnood:
I had the honor and privilege of working with Bob Levine at CIRA for many years. I was also delighted that Bob agreed to join my Fogarty-funded bioethics training grant starting in 2011 with our partners at Central South University (CSU) in Changsha, China. Bob trained multiple faculty and students at CSU on a range of bioethics topics and gave numerous presentations at CSU and other academic and public health institutions in China. He was well respected and highly appreciated by our Chinese colleagues. He was a kind, respectful person of high intellectual talent and I have learned so much from him. I miss you, Bob.
Rest in peace.
Published: Monday, March 22, 2021
