Was a prominent HIV researcher who died in the 2014 crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 planning to declare the virus a "man-made disease"? No, that's not true: Dr. Joep Lange's work in the field of HIV/AIDS focused largely on developing treatment options and the global inequities of treating the disease, not the origin of AIDS itself. A Google News search found no evidence that Lange planned to make any such declaration.
The claim appeared in a post on Instagram (archived here) on December 2, 2024, with the caption "Was this the reason?" The post included a short video showing a composite of several photographs of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the now-retired director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, under the title "MURDERER!"
The text overlay said:
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17) was shot down on 17 July 2014, while flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed. This was because the plane has world-renowned AIDS researcher Dr. Joep Lange who was going to declare HIV a man-made disease.
Here is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Wed Dec 4 17:18:50 2024 UTC)
On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 took off from Amsterdam heading to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. It crashed in eastern Ukraine. All 298 people on board died.
The reason for the crash is well-documented. According to a Dutch Safety Board review (archived here), "a Buk surface-to-air missile system from a 320-square-kilometre area in the eastern part of Ukraine, detonated to the left and above the cockpit." The report cited the "armed conflict" between Ukraine and Russia and urged countries in future conflict zones to better advise commercial air traffic.
Several passengers on Flight 17 were headed to Melbourne, Australia, for the 2014 International AIDS Conference (archived here). One of them was Dr. Joep Lange (archived here), 59, a Dutch national who, according to his obituary (archived here) was considered "one of the world's top clinical AIDs researchers."
According to the obituary, Lange made his mark developing drug therapy to attack the virus and making sure that treatment reached everyone:
He felt that his responsibility did not stop with publishing a scientific paper and he would not rest until people in need were able to benefit from his research. He worked tirelessly on widening access to anti-retroviral therapy from the mid-90s, when death rates among people living with HIV in poorer countries were high because of a lack of treatment.
There is no evidence Lange was "going to declare HIV a man-made disease" before his death. A Google News search with the terms "Joep Lange HIV origin" (archived here) returned no pertinent results.
Lead Stories reached out to the International AIDS Society (archived here), where Lange served as president until 2004, and the Amsterdam Institute for Global Health and Development (archived here), where he served as scientific director. This fact check will be updated when they respond.
For more Lead Stories fact checks on claims involving HIV or AIDS, click here. For more Lead Stories fact checks on claims regarding Ukraine, click here.
