David Ho

David Ho is, to me, a genuine hero in a way few public figures ever are. Born in Taichung and raised in America, he pioneered combination antiretroviral therapy at the exact moment HIV meant certain death, and in doing so converted a terminal sentence into a manageable chronic illness. It is hard to overstate how many lives that single shift in thinking has saved. The Presidential Citizens Medal and Prince Mahidol Award are impressive, yet what moves me is the human reality behind them: hope returned to people who had none. Scientists like Ho rarely get celebrity treatment, but they deserve it most.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

David Ho

Name (Japanese)

デビッド・ホー

Reading

でびっど・ほー

Born

November 3, 1952 (age 74)

Origin

Taichung, Taiwan

Occupation

virologist / physician

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Dragon

High school

John Marshall High School

Awards & achievements

• Presidential Citizens Medal
• 2006 California Hall of Fame
• 1991 Ernst Jung Prize for Medicine
• 1997 Humanitarian of the Year
• honorary doctor of the University of Hong Kong
• 2006 honorary doctor of the Tsinghua University
• 2013 Prince Mahidol Award
• 2007 Great Immigrants Award

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%20Ho
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%87%E3%83%93%E3%83%83%E3%83%89%E3%83%BB%E3%83%9B%E3%83%BC
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q378003

Tags

• virologist
• physician

Last updated

November 3, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.