Deja Vu

When the Band Played On…

Tags:

AIDS,

HIV,

illness,

Nobel Prize,

research

“Discoverers of AIDS and Cancer Viruses Win Nobel,” The New York Times, Oct. 7, 2008.

The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded Monday to three European scientists who had discovered viruses behind two devastating illnesses, AIDS and cervical cancer.

Half of the award will be shared by two French virologists, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, 61, and Luc A. Montagnier, 76, for discovering H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Conspicuously omitted was Dr. Robert C. Gallo, an American virologist who vied with the French team in a long, often acrimonious dispute over credit for the discovery of H.I.V….

Nobel Foundation rules limit the number of recipients of its medical prizes to a maximum of three each year, and omissions often create controversy.

The dispute between Dr. Gallo and the French team spanned years and sprawled from the lab into the highest levels of government. Dr. Gallo, 71, now at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, worked for many years at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md.

While in Bethesda in 1984, a year after the French team’s report, Dr. Gallo reported finding a virus that he called H.T.L.V.-3 and that was later shown to be nearly identical to the French L.A.V. After additional studies, Dr. Gallo said cultures in his laboratory had accidentally become contaminated with the French virus.

In 1986, Dr. Gallo and Dr. Montagnier shared a prestigious Lasker award, given in the United States; Dr. Montagnier was cited for discovering the virus and Dr. Gallo for determining that it caused AIDS.

In 1987, President Reagan and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac of France signed an agreement to share royalties and credit for the discovery.

But Maria Masucci, a member of the Nobel Assembly, told Reuters on Monday that “there was no doubt as to who made the fundamental discoveries.”

Dr. Gallo told The Associated Press on Monday that it was “a disappointment” not to have been honored with the French team. Later, Dr. Gallo issued a statement congratulating this year’s Nobel Prize winners and said he “was gratified to read Dr. Montagnier’s kind statement this morning expressing that I was equally deserving.”

“Isolation of a T-Lymphotropic Retrovirus from a Patient at Risk for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS),” by F. Barré-Sinoussi, J. C. Chermann, F. Rey, M. T. Nugeyre, S. Chamaret, J. Gruest, C. Dauguet, C. Axler-Blin, F. Vézinet-Brun, C. Rouzioux, W. Rozenbaum, and L. Montagnier, Science 220, May 20, 1983.
This article in Science introduced the world to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

The acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) has recently been recognized in several countries. The disease has been reported mainly in homosexual males with multiple partners, and epidemiological studies suggest horizontal transmission by sexual routes as well as by intravenous drug administration, and blood transfusion. The pronounced depression of cellular immunity that occurs with patients with AIDS and the quantitative modifications of subpopulations of their T lymphocytes suggest that T cells or a subset of T cells might be a preferential target for the putative infectious agent. Alternatively, these modifications may result from subsequent infections. The depressed cellular immunity may result in serious opportunistic infections in AIDS patients, many of whom develop Kaposi’s sarcoma….We report here the isolation of a novel retrovirus from a lymph node of a homosexual patient with multiple lymphadenopathies. The virus appears to be a member of the human T-cell leukemia virus (HTLV) family….

Beyond Love, by Dominique Lapierre (trans. Kathryn Spink), 1991.

In the early 1980s, it was inconceivable to Dr. Robert Gallo—discoverer of the first human retrovirus—that anyone other than himself would (or could) solve the riddle of a then-unknown AIDS virus. To the dismay of many, he let his ego trump science in the race to isolate and lay claim to the discovery of HIV.

…Nothing ever happened in the small world of retrovirology without Robert Gallo being instantly informed. There was not one single research laboratory, even in the most remote of countries, where he did not have some contact, someone who was obligated to him, an informer. The enormous budget his own center enjoyed made it possible for him to dispense bounteous grants in American and abroad. Therein lay the source of many allegiances. His fame as a scientist, his consummate skill as a communicator, his irresistible charm, had also won him countless political and scientific connections. His sovereign grip on world virological research was in fact so absolute that no major discovery could hope to be recognized without his having approved it himself. “For any research project, we needed the great god Gallo’s blessing,” the Frenchman Jean-Claude Chermann would say. “It was the only way we would be taken seriously by our own bosses and wrest the necessary finances fro them. Poor backward creatures that we were, we needed American sanction. At that time, French, even European medical research, only put in the commas while the Americans supplied whole sentences.”

To aspire to attack the infallibility of one of the most illustrious of these scientists was like committing a crime of high treason. If Luc Montagnier and his team wanted to bring their discovery of the international scientific community, they must risk the wrath of the “god Gallo.” Yet it was this very “god” in person who suggested to the French the choice of vehicle for their communication and date of publication. Montagner recalls: “As a matter of fact, Gallo told me that he was going to publish a study showing how his HTLV was implicated in AIDS in an edition of Science of May twentieth, 1983, and that it would be accompanied by a text by the veterinary biologist Max Essex, who had just found the HTLV retrovirus in thirty percent of a group of AIDS patients.” The American suggested that his Parisian colleague publish a paper in the same issue describing the results achieved by the team at the Pasteur Institute.

Had Robert Gallo seen the opportunity to defuse the French discovery? Not only did he undertake to have Luc Montagnier’s article accepted for the same edition of Science, he also wrote the introductory summary. This was an act of “generosity” that would enable him to exploit to his own advantage a lamentable blunder on the part of the French in their designation of their retrovirus. Since the latter essentially infected the T lymphocytes, they had christened it the “human T-lymphotropic virus,” which meant that it had the same initials, HTLV, as Robert Gallo’s “human T-cell leukemia virus.” This confusion served to reinforce the conviction Gallo persisted in maintaining. He was quick to announce that as the French had given their virus the same surname as his HTLV, they must themselves consider it to be a close relative.

This piece of deviousness astounded the Pasteur team. That summer they immediately rechristened their virus “lymphadenopathy-associated virus.” Its three initials—LAV—could also stand for “lymphadenopathy AIDS virus.” The French LAV versus the American HTLV: within a matter of weeks this battle of initials would make the headlines of the world’s press.

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