Rest In Peace, Dr. Frank Plummer

"He was admired and regarded highly by academics and researchers around the world, and his legacy of seeking to develop an HIV vaccine remains one of the landmarks of infectious disease prevention."
David Barnard, president, University of Manitoba

"His contributions have had a cumulative global impact on saving the lives of tens of thousands of people for decades and also improving the lives of HIV-positive people around the world."
Digvir Jayas, vice president, research, University of Manitoba

"A family history of liver disease plus alcohol was my undoing."
"[I began to drink scotch] to celebrate, relax and deal with stress, anxiety, disappointment and grief."
"Having committed my career to medical science and human health, I saw this study as one more way to make a contribution -- this time, literally using my brain [through deep brain stimulation DBS in an effort to combat his alcoholism]."
Dr.Frank Plummer, microbiologist, infectious-disease expert, 67, former scientific director, National Microbiology Laboratory, Winnipeg

CBC 1987: Dr. Frank Plummer talks about the breakthroughs in HIV/AIDS research in South Africa.

"He was always focused on truth and knowledge and making the world a better place."
"He wanted everyone to know he was a proud Winnipegger and a proud Canadian, and that all of us can make important globally significant contributions."
"He helped to identify a lot of the key factors that are involved in HIV transmission in the early days [in Kenya in the 1980s]."
"He developed a lot of interventions that helped save hundreds of thousands of lives across the world. Frank was definitely a brilliant mind." 
Keith Fowke, head of medical microbiology and infectious diseases, University of Manitoba

"Frank dedicated decades of his time to Africa and led world-changing breakthroughs in HIV prevention.""Of course, the most noteworthy breakthrough that he and his team made was the finding of female sex-workers who were resistant to HIV. The gift these women have given science in the years since has been unparalleled.
"Frank had just had a joyful reunion with many of them a couple days before his passing."
Matthew Gilmour, director general, National Microbiology Lab, Winnipeg

Frank Plummer was recently reunited with a group of women he worked with in the past on his last visit to Kenya in 2020. (Photos by Jo Kennelly)

He was an extraordinarily gifted and passionate researcher whose work in Africa was widely acknowledged for his valuable contribution to the fight against AIDS/HIV. It was while he opted to live and work in Kenya that the stress of the work environment, the depression caused by seeing so many people die, among them colleagues, had him seek an outlet of relaxation and mood control, and he turned to alcohol to achieve that temporary dimming of the agony he felt. He became reliant on alcohol to relieve stress and depression.

And he found it difficult, just as most people do, to regard himself as an alcoholic. It was when, after years of alcohol abuse had ravaged his body and he was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and needed a liver transplant, that he found the usual conventional methods of aid in withdrawing from alcohol consumption failed to work for him. When he discovered that Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, the world's sole centre testing deep brain stimulation for alcoholism was prepared to embark on a study, he volunteered to become the first person to undergo that surgery.

Over a million Canadians are afflicted in any given year with alcoholism. He felt that not only might he be able to solve his personal alcohol problem, but a positive outcome would prove immensely useful to the countless others for whom alcoholism had become a ruination of their lives, their health. Following the procedure where an incision was made in his cranium, and two quarter-sized holes drilled into his brain to accommodate an implant like a heart pacemaker to continually send signals to his brain, he no longer craved alcohol.

"I maybe have two or three drinks if I do drink. And I can stop", he said in an interview. He had been accustomed to drinking in the morning and at night would have 20 ounces of scotch. "It got to be the main focus of my life", he explained, which led him to search for a more "robust" medical solution, and the procedure he underwent at Sunnybrook was just what the doctor ordered for himself. His life changed completely, alcohol no longer of great interest to him.

"My life is full of lots of other things than alcohol", he stated. He was writing a book, he developed an interest in cooking, and he relished taking his dog for walks. "Just enjoying life for the first time in a very long time." This was, after all, a man who excelled in the practise of a profession of profound importance for the greater good of the human community. He had helped to set up the national laboratory in Winnipeg which became a world-class research institution.

During the SARS, Influenza and H1N1 epidemics he helmed the laboratory. He was doing so during the development of an Ebola vaccine. This was a man whose research shaped public health policy globally. In Kenya, he had built a world-class research operation. There, he made the observation that a group of women had a natural immunity to HIV-1, a discovery providing vital information for the development of an HIV vaccine.

Ultimately, he became the first person in a North American trial to undergo deep brain stimulation for chronic heavy drinking, in 2018. Several months ago he made the decision to publicly reveal his battle with alcoholism. He had turned his life around. He went with his family to Kenya, returning to the country where he had spent years striving to help it in its battle against a deadly, rapacious virus.
And there he was scheduled as a keynote speaker at the University of Nairobi's annual meeting.

Renowned Canadian scientist Frank Plummer dies in Kenya, where he led HIV breakthroughs

And it was at the collaborative centre for research and training in HIV/AIDS/STIs yesterday that he collapsed, was taken to hospital in Nairobi, and the grim news was released that this extraordinary man had been pronounced dead on arrival, with no confirmed cause of death yet established for public release.