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https://www.tulsaworld.com/archive/tulsa-doctor-aids-researcher-dies/article_da36dc58-6e5b-5505-8912-c24e95066d65.html

Tulsa doctor, AIDS researcher dies

Staff Reports Apr 6, 2007

Services for Gary Davis Sr., 55, will be held next week.

Gary Randolph Davis Sr., a Tulsa physician who struggled to gain government approval for his experimental AIDS treatment, died April 3. He was 55.A rosary will be recited at 7 p.m. Monday at Jack's Funeral Home, and a funeral Mass will be said at 11 a.m. Tuesday at St. Monica Catholic Church. Davis was born April 28, 1952, in Tacoma, Wash. He moved to Tulsa as a child and graduated from Washington High School and Northeastern State University in Tahlequah. He received his medical degree from Dartmouth Medical School in 1977. He trained at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and the Naval Regional Medical Center in Charleston, S.C. He moved back to Tulsa in 1984 and began a medical practice. He also was a senior medical officer at the Navy and Marines Corps Center in Broken Arrow. Davis' interest in AIDS research began when he saw the suffering of his HIV-infected patients. He told the Tulsa World in 1999 that the idea for an AIDS treatment derived from goat antibodies came to him in a 1992 dream. "Animals can make these specialized antibodies to kill this virus," he said in 1999. "The AIDS virus is not allowing the body to make neutral izing antibodies in a number sufficient enough to kill the virus. If I can make these antibodies outside of the body and give it back to the human, it's like bringing in new troops from a different country." Davis struggled to gain FDA approval for trials for his treatment. In 1996, the FDA approved a Phase 1 trial but then canceled it six hours before the trial was to begin, citing problems with Davis' application and the need for more information. Davis later conducted trials in several African countries, his wife, Sadonna Davis, said. Tuskegee University conducted experiments using Davis' method. In tests tubes, the neutralizing antibodies extracted from a goat blocked HIV cells from fusing with human cells, Davis said in 1999. Davis is survived by his wife, Sadonna Davis; a daughter, Glashay Davis of Tulsa; two sons, Gary Davis Jr. of Philadelphia and Shawn Davis of Hanau, Germany; his mother, Carmel Thompson of Sacramento, Calif.; two sisters, Benita Sanders of Sacramento and Phyllis Norwood of Lancaster, Texas; three brothers, Malcolm Davis Jr. of Coweta, Don Davis of Frisco, Texas, and Benjamin Boulware of Tulsa; and two grandchildren.