Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- robert_gallo [2022/11/26 18:19]
pamela created
+++ robert_gallo [2022/11/26 19:02] (current)
pamela
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 ===== Robert Gallo =====
+{{ ::robert_gallo_tv_pic.png?600 |}}
+==== NIH In His Own Words ====
+Overview and three interview transcripts
+When Dr. Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus, first came to the National Cancer Institute in 1965, he didn't know he would be staying so long. He planned to eventually return to academia, where he could teach and do clinical work as well as basic research. But he became "addicted," he says, to the research. “There was constant stimulation from so many good people, easy access to technology from so much diverse science around me, and the steadiness of funding.”
+When Dr. Gallo decided to search for a human retrovirus, an effort he details in his book Virus Hunting, most scientists thought human retroviruses simply did not–could not–exist. But Dr. Gallo noticed holes in the standard arguments, and he was prodded by a strong intuition. His discovery of the first known human retroviruses, human T-cell leukemia viruses I and II, came just before AIDS emerged in the United States and proved invaluable to those searching for the cause of this mysterious disease.
+Dr. Gallo proposed that a retrovirus caused AIDS in 1982. By 1984, his group at the NCI and a scientific team at the Pasteur Institute had discovered HIV and identified it as the cause of AIDS. Dr. Gallo currently heads the [[:Institute of Human Virology]] at the [[:University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute]] in Baltimore. ((https://web.archive.org/web/20200510062516/https://history.nih.gov/display/history/Dr.+Robert+Gallo))
+=== Interview One ===
+This is the first oral history interview with Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute concerning the history of AIDS at the National Institutes of Health. The date is 25 August 1994. The interviewers are Dr. Victoria A. Harden, Director of the NIH Historical Office, and Dennis Rodrigues, program analyst, NIH Historical Office. The interview takes place in Dr. Gallo's laboratory in Building 37, Room 6A11, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. ((https://web.archive.org/web/20200609013230/https://history.nih.gov/display/history/Dr+Robert+Gallo+Interview+01+August-25-1994))
+=== Interview Two ====
+This is the second oral history interview with Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute about the history of AIDS at the National Institutes of Health. The date is 4 November 1994. The interviewers are Dr. Victoria A. Harden, Director, NIH Historical Office, and Dennis Rodrigues, program analyst, NIH Historical Office.
+Harden: Dr. Gallo, when we ended the first interview, we had set the stage for the discussion of AIDS. We had talked about when [Dr. James] Jim Curran of the [[:Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]] came to the NIH [[:National Institutes of Health]] and was prodding you to go into AIDS research. Much of your early work has been detailed in many different places–in your book and in a variety of other publications–so what we would like to do in this interview is to have a few points amplified, not to attempt to recount all the facts.
+One of the key questions that has come up over and over again is how, when a new disease appears, can it be demonstrated that a particular agent is the cause of it? Chronologically, the French isolated their virus, LAV, in 1983, but they did not demonstrate conclusively that there was a causal link between their virus and AIDS. You waited until May 1984, and then published four papers in Science to do this. In fact, you wrote to [Dr.] [[:Jean-Claude Chermann]] noting that you wanted to wait to publish in order to obtain a certain number of papers to establish the etiology. Why did it take four papers to establish it and what particular points were you trying to make with those papers?
+Gallo: That is a good question. First, it did not take four papers; that was just the number that Science accepted. It is a large number obviously. We wanted to get the maximum amount of data published in as rapid a period of time in the most visible journal that we could. In fact, we sent a fifth paper with more antibody testing data in it, at almost exactly the same time, to The Lancet. It was a paper by Dr. [[:Bijan Safai]], a clinical collaborator, myself, and my colleagues, in which there was 100 percent accuracy in blind testing of patients with AIDS for antibodies, the tell-tale sign of the infection. Let me just say that there is nothing magical about having four, five, or six papers. There was a lot more data from many other collaborators, including the CDC, that we did not include in those five papers, but that we had in hand and were ready to write up in subsequent papers.
+The question you asked is interesting. Jon Cohen of Science asked me the same thing following his long interviews with and questioning of [[:Peter Duesberg]]. That article will come out in Science within a week or two. So I have had a chance to think about that question again. Jon said to me, “Obviously things pointed to the cause steadily thereafter, but how did you know that soon?" The answer is something like this. Somebody like Duesberg focuses on the .01 percent uncertainty, or the 0.1 percent uncertainty, but most scientific answers that you obtain related to a human disease–and very often in many aspects of science–are never 100 percent certain. ((https://web.archive.org/web/20200609013324/https://history.nih.gov/display/history/Dr+Robert+Gallo+Interview+02+November+4+1994))
+=== Interview Three ===
+This is the third oral history interview with Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute concerning the history of AIDS at NIH. The interviewers are Dr. Victoria A. Harden, Director, NIH Historical Office, and Dennis Rodrigues, program analyst, NIH Historical Office. The interview takes place on 8 June 1995 in Dr. Gallo's laboratory in Building 37, Room 6A11
+Staying with [[:retroviruses]], it is clear that in nature–I probably used this example in earlier discussions, but I will use it again–when a cat gets infected by the feline leukemia retrovirus, it usually does not get leukemia; it is usually carrying the virus without leukemia occurring. My belief is that if cats lived long enough, let us say, for 100 years, the majority would get leukemia. There is a chance of genetic events occurring due to the integration of the provirus that eventually leads to leukemia.
+**But it is known that if you inoculate the right dose in a young enough kitten, you get leukemia all the time. This is typical. The same is true with chicken leukemia retrovirus. If you inoculate newborn chicks with a proper dose, most will get leukemia. But, in nature, when chickens get infected as adults, it is unusual for them to get leukemia. So, it sometimes depends on the age of the individual,** or on the age of the organism, or on the dose of the microbe. These are chance events. People often do not appreciate that.
+((https://web.archive.org/web/20200609013348/https://history.nih.gov/display/history/Dr+Robert+Gallo+Interview+3+June+8+1995))
 ==== Uncovering a cover-up in AIDS research ====