Jaap Goudsmit

Jaap Goudsmit (born July 22, 1951 in Amsterdam) is a Dutch scientist, known for his research in the field of AIDS and influenza. He shifted his research interest to aging and neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer's Disease. He is also a prolific writer of non-fiction books: Viral Sex: the Nature of AIDS (1997); Viral Fitness: The Next SARS and West Nile in the Making (2004); Serendipity (2012); The Vaccine Bug: A Personal History of the World of Immunity, 1978–2011 (2013); Immorbidity: Spelling Out a Life Free of Dis-ease (2015); The Time of your Life: Staying Healthy to the End (2016) and The Art of Facing Mortality: A Scientist's View (2016). Goudsmit was among the first in 1986 who discovered that the amount of HIV in blood predicted the progression to clinically manifest AIDS and he discovered in 2008 the Achilles heel of the influenza virus that opened the way towards a universal influenza vaccine. In 2013 Goudsmit coined the concept "Immorbidity" for a human life course immune to age-related diseases that prematurely end life, accepting that even with a minimum of disease human life ends. In 2000 the science-fiction writer Wil McCarthy introduced the term " immorbidity " in his book " The Collapsium" as the concept to eradicate all terminal illness during time transport over lightyears making the transported people virtually immortal. Goudsmit disagrees with this link between immortality and immorbidity. In 1978 Goudsmit received his MD degree with honor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Amsterdam. He was awarded a Fogarty fellowship and joined the research on kuru with Nobel Prize winner Daniel Carleton Gajdusek. He received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 1982. He received a Fogarty Visiting Scientist Award to do postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland....