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. ¹⁾

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. ²⁾

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. ³⁾

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. ⁴⁾

March 31, 2002 by Ted Anton - Chicago Tribune

Readers may know something of the story. In 1984, Dr. Robert Gallo, a researcher for the National Institutes of Health, published an unprecedented four papers in the journal Science announcing his isolation of the AIDS virus, an incredible discovery in the panicky early days of the disease. The trouble was, Gallo's virus closely resembled a virus sent to him for analysis, isolated by French Pasteur Institute researcher Luc Montagnier a year earlier. For another year an intense battle raged as to whether the Americans had simply “discovered” the same French sample, a critical fact in the frantic effort to unravel the disease and to screen the world's donated blood supplies.

The stakes were high: millions of dollars in blood-test-patent royalties, a potential Nobel Prize, national pride and, most important, a strategy to fight a global epidemic. Gallo obfuscated and blustered, threatening colleagues and misleading investigators. In America a flawed Red Cross blood test, based on Gallo's flawed science, caused unbelievable heartache and contributed to fatalities with false positive and negative readings. When the two samples were shown to be “remarkably similar,” the Americans and French agreed in 1987 to split the American test patent royalties.

The story seemed over, until Crewdson's 1989 Tribune expose shook the foundations of American biomedical research. Crewdson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, attacked the story as a political scandal, uncovering a much wider cover-up than anyone suspected. Not only was it the same virus but, in seeking to hide what had happened, Gallo was spinning out more and more lies with great potential damage to research, all with the American government's backing. The report caused a second explosion. A congressional watchdog and two new, much more aggressive government investigations jumped on the case. What happened next takes up much of the book's final chapters.

Crewdson builds our outrage as he meticulously deconstructs the game of big science. Gallo was a master manipulator of a new media culture in research. Popular and intimidating on the international conference circuit, he wooed editors, producers and influential colleagues. For example, he got the august journal Nature to support his version of events by playing on its need to beat its rival journal Science. Once Nature Editor John Maddox realized his error, he reportedly vowed to “stick the knife in Bob a bit more.” ⁵⁾

‘The tale of Dr. Robert Gallo’s role in the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS is one of those stories that wouldn’t be believable as fiction…Science Fictions is bursting with allegations leveled at Dr. Gallo, his associates, rivals and enemies, that include deception, misconduct, incompetence, fraud, sabotage, back-stabbing, double-dealing, overstatements, half-truths, outright lies, a clandestine affair with a co-worker, a bribery attempt, denials, evasions, coverups and serial rewritings of history.’ — New York Times

‘Scrupulously researched and sweeping… Science Fictions documents enough treachery, negligence and megalomania to make even the most trusting of readers skeptical of the scientific establishment.’ — Washington Post

‘A gripping work with important implications…With incredible tenacity, Crewdson reveals a biological research scandal that was significant, frightening and, most of all, a testament to one reporter’s quest to separate science fact from fiction.’ — Chicago Tribune

‘Crewdson’s work is the most powerful and revealing since James Watson’s The Double Helix…This is an awesomely documented prosecutorial brief that concedes no credit to its target and yields him no doubts. If the Gallo camp has a rebuttal, let’s hear it.’ — New Scientist

‘No one knows whether someone in Gallo’s lab stole the French virus or if it contaminated their samples through sloppy practice, and it really doesn’t matter… And as Crewdson shows, the biggest discoveries in Gallo’s career — his claim to have identified the virus that causes AIDS and the patent on the AIDS blood test — both belong to someone else.’ — Baltimore Sun

‘Robert Gallo’s hour was not the brightest for American science. In fact, it may be one of the darkest. The two-decade-long sequence of events described in John Crewdson’s new book resembles more the actions of a megalomaniac intent more on self-promotion and profit than on a way to stop the AIDS epidemic.’ — San Diego Union-Tribune

‘I could hardly put the book down out of a mounting realization that this was more than a story about human vanity and political corruption. Science Fictions is ultimately a scientific detective story, with dramatic plot twists, inspired sleuthing, and unlikely heroes. It’s a crime with many victims, and one that is well worth the effort to understand.’ — Washington Monthly

‘John Crewdson, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, has written a detailed history of the events that led scientists to the cause of AIDS - and it makes unpleasant reading for anyone who thought science was simply about the pursuit of truth. Instead, a picture emerges of deliberate falsehoods, exaggerated claims and denigrating criticism.’ — The Independent (London)

‘Crewdson’s squalid tale of grasping self-interest in the face of a devastating epidemic is told through court documents, reports from internal NIH and congressional investigative committees and interviews. The enormous amount of evidence which the author has gathered in favor of the French seems convincing.’ — Los Angeles Times

‘Science Fictions is about scientists behaving very, very badly. Crewdson’s research is thorough, his writing brisk.’ — Edmonton Journal

‘A compelling case that Gallo claimed and obtained recognition for research that had, in fact, been accomplished by the French…this book is a successful indictment of Gallo, whom history will probably judge to have been guilty of excessive zeal in the pursuit of scientific glory.’ — Montreal Gazette

‘Was Gallo’s behavior so extreme as to be anomalous, or was it to some extent encouraged by what Crewdson calls a “hypercompetitive” scientific culture? If Science Fictions forces scientists to address these difficult questions — and it should — it will have served its purpose.’ — New York Times Book Review

‘Science Fictions is a profoundly disturbing account, demonstrating that even brilliant minds may trade truth for fame or fortune…John Crewdson has written a masterpiece.’ — Providence Journal-Bulletin

‘Comprehensive and compelling…The level of drama here is unprecedented…Crewdson is able to weave a story that is impossible to put down.’ — Publishers Weekly

‘A meticulous account of slippery science that develops slowly into a panoramic view of the biomedical world.’ — Kirkus Reviews ⁶⁾