Chemist may head AIDS-virus discovery inquiry

Abstract

A respected protein chemist likely will head the inquiry that is being set up by the National Institutes of Health's office of scientific integrity into alleged irregularities by Robert C. Gallo, the National Cancer Institute's star AIDS researcher. Meanwhile, the controversy surrounding discovery of the AIDS virus is making headlines in France. Three years ago, a legal settlement signed by the U.S. and French governments seemed to end the dispute over whether Gallo's laboratory or that of Luc Montagnier at Pasteur Institute in Paris had first discovered the AIDS virus. The researchers agreed to share priority and the two governments agreed to split the royalties from a blood test for AIDS developed at NIH. France had sued the U.S. patent office for awarding patent rights to the test to the U.S. An extensive article published last November in the Chicago Tribune, however, concluded that Gallo's lab never had independently discovered the AIDS virus. Instead, according ...