Among those lost on the Malaysian Airlines flight that went down over the Ukraine yesterday were 100 world renowned AIDS researchers who were bound for an AIDS conference in Australia. Let that thought percolate through your consciousness for a moment. Think about what that means to the state of those with the disease presently and the possibility of achieving a world without HIV or AIDS. All the possible leaps in research, all the possible midnight thoughts and breakthroughs that may never happen now that 1o0 researchers fighting one of the worlds most terrifying illnesses, described as “100 of our best and brightest” by Cleve Jones founder of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation are gone. Among the scientists was Joep Lange, who had fought to bring less expensive HIV and AIDS treatments to Africa, as an article on Bloomburg.com explains:

“He was shocked to see how, from 1996 onwards, expensive HIV therapies became available to patients in rich countries, but not in Africa,”  “He made it his mission to change this and to put an end to the gross inequality in access to life-saving medication.”

This plane being shot down was an international tragedy on every score. Citizens of the Netherlands, Malaysia, the U.K., Australia, Germany, Belgium, the Philippines and Canada are among the dead that have been verified so far. As we await the verification of the remaining 41, it is unclear how well organized the recovery and investigation are at present. According to reports in one Reuters article on this horrific tragedy locals describe bodies falling through kitchen ceilings. The body of a woman who fell into the home of a 65 year old local is still sitting, naked and unattended, in the woman’s home because the owner said that someone told her to let the “experts” come and collect the woman’s remains (which has yet to happen as of this writing).  The woman whose home was damaged explains:

“There was a howling noise and everything started to rattle. Then objects started falling out of the sky,” the 65-year-old pensioner said in front of her grey-brick home. And then I heard a roar and she landed in the kitchen, the roof was broken,” she said, showing the gaping hole made by the body when it came through the ceiling of the kitchen in an extension to the house.”

The seemingly unflappable Dutch are understandably beside themselves, having lost 189 citizens on the ill fated flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, including a Dutch Senator and his family. At least their Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, said that they would leave no stone unturned to find the culprits responsible for this atrocity, unlike ours who seems more concerned about giving a man named Jeremy a round of applause for providing him with a stellar introduction at his latest speech.

Incredibly much of the Dutch people’s anger is focused on Vladimir Putin (gasp!). It seems that they say that this could not have happened if Kiev had stepped in to do something to prevent the strife that is ongoing in the country. According to reports from a U.S. defense official who declined to give his name in a CNN article the missile system that is thought to have been used in the attack is a Russian made BUK system, known as the SA-11 among NATO forces. The Russian separatists were known by U.S. military intelligence analysts to have a BUK system and the same source confirms that either the SA-11 or the SA-20 could have taken down the airliner.

Whatever the findings of the investigation are, this event is sure to have long reaching consequences for the world in general. Who knows what those on board could have achieved had this horrendous act not been carried out against innocent civilians, and who knows what consequences-if any-those responsible will suffer. Only time will tell.