America has made a fetish of redemption, whereby the sinner wondrously mends his ways. But Dr Alan Berkman, who died on June 5 in Manhattan at the age of 63, achieved his undoubted state of grace without ever changing his radical spots.

From his clinic in the Bronx, he became one of the doughtiest fighters against the scourge of HIV/Aids, a leader in the struggle to bring down the cost of antiretroviral drugs to the poorest of the poor. Yet he also spent years on the run and in prison for his commitment to radical causes, forged while at university by his opposition to the Vietnam war and the injustices he perceived in his own country.