DR. HENRI ATLAN is a French and Israeli biophysicist and philosopher. Born to a Jewish family in French Algeria, Atlan gained degrees in medicine and biophysics at the University of Paris. He then moved to the University of California, Berkeley working on aging and mutation. Influenced by Heinz von Foerster (an Austrian American scientist combining physics and philosophy), he became interested in applying cybernetics and information theory to living organisms, and went to the Weizmann Institute in Jerusalem to work under the biophysicist Aharon Katchalsky (an Israeli pioneer in the study of the electrochemistry of biopolymers).
   Returning to Paris in 1972, his publications from that year on information theory and self-organizing systems achieved a wide readership. He taught biophysics at the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris and the Hadassah Medical Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His participation with Francisco Varela at a conference in Cerisy-la-Salle encouraged interest in cognitive science in France. Atlan was instrumental in the establishment of the Centre de Recherche en Épistémologie Appliquée (CREA) at the École Polytechnique, and was appointed in 1983 to the Comité Consultatif National d'Éthique pour la Sciences de a Vie et de la Santé (National Advisory Committee on Ethics in the Life Sciences and Medicine). He has been appointed to a chair in the philosophy of biology at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales.
   He is also a member of Collegium International, an organazation of leaders with political, scientific, and ethical expertise whose goal is to provide new approaches in overcoming the obstacles in the way of a peaceful, socially just and an economically sustainable world. He is currently Director of the Human Biology Research Center and Scholar in residence for studies in Philosophy and Ethics of Biology Hadassah University Hospital, Jerusalem.
   Under Dr. Atlan’s Direction, the Human Biology Research Center, saw a breakthrough in the research on HIV/AIDS in 2005. His research team led by Dr. Rivka Abulafia-Lapid and assisted by Yael Keren-Zur, developed a vaccine that significantly strengthens the body’s immune system against the autoimmune pathological conditions resulting from HIV infection, a breakthrough that could have a dramatic and positive impact on the treatment of AIDS patients.
   HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, causes damage several ways. First, it attacks and destroys white blood cells called CD4, which are an integral component of the body’s immune system. Second, it confuses the autoimmune system, so that, even after the cocktail of drugs commonly used to kill the virus does its job, the immune system turns inward against itself. Newly recruited “killer cells” continue to do damage by destroying more CD4 cells, leaving patients prone to additional infections, the worst stage of which is AIDS. Scientists at the Human Biology Research Center have successfully identified the “killer cells” as CD8 white blood cells. Researchers remove them, reproduce them in large numbers in the lab, kill them, and finally re-inject them as a vaccine that will stimulate the immune system to destroy the remaining “killer cells” in the blood stream.
   Seven patients were treated with the new therapeutic vaccine. Each received between three and four injections over a six-month period. Following treatment, the patients’ CD4 cell count was monitored for another two years. In five of the seven vaccinated patients, the CD4 cells increased by more than 50 percent. The aim was to strengthen the immune system. The vaccination treatment complements the antiviral by stopping the body from continuing to destroy itself. Researchers are continuing their development of the vaccine and continue clinical trials.