How Gallo won this award.

by Janine Roberts

It seems that it has been whitewashed out of history that in 1990 a powerful Congressional Investigative Sub-Committee under Representative John Dingell launched a major inquiry into Dr Robert Gallo's research on HIV to see if he had proved his virus caused AIDS - or had stolen a French virus as alleged by the Institut Pasteur - with the final result that Gallo's own HIV research was trashed and he offically lost his credit for having discovered HIV, only escaping on a technicality being indicted for criminal fraud in his patent application for the HIV Test.

Gallo had documented his claim to have found HIV in several scientific papers. These are 4 in number, all published in early May 1984 in the same issue of the Science journal. All were co-authored by Dr Robert Gallo and his team. These document his claim to have fouind and isolated the the AIDS virus first in 1982.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the empoyers of Dr Gallo, then immediately followed suite by launching its own Inquiry under its Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI), supervised by the Richards Panel of scientists nominated by the US National Academy of Science and Institute of Medicine.

In 1991 the Inspector General of the Department of Health began a separate investigation into whether Gallo should be indicted for lying in his application for patent rights to the HIV Blood Test, and the Department of Health replaced the OSI inquiry, after allegations that the NIH had been shredding key evidence, with one of its own, run by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI).

The ORI was the first to report. It found Gallo guilty of multiple deceptions. In 1993 it drew up a powerful indictment (Offer of Proof) that it presented to the Department of Health's  'Research Integrity Adjudication Panel'.

This noted:

§        'Research process can proceed with confidence only if scientists can assume that the previously reported facts on which their work is based are correct. If the bricks are in fact false...then the scientific wall of truth may crumble...Such actions threaten the very integrity of the scientific process.'

§        'In light of the groundbreaking nature of this research and its profound public health implications, ORI believes that the careless and unacceptable keeping of research records...reflects irresponsible laboratory management that has permanently impaired the ability to retrace the important steps taken. '

§        [This] 'put the public health at risk and, at the minimum, severely undermined the ability of the scientific community to reproduce and/or verify the efforts of the LTCB [Gallo's 'Laboratory for Tumor Cell Biology'] in isolating and growing the AIDS virus.'

§        'Gallo's failings as a Lab Chief are evidenced in the Popovic Science paper, a paper conspicuously lacking in significant primary data and fraught with false and erroneous statements.' (This is the paper on which the HIV Test patent was based.)

§        Gallo 'repeatedly misrepresents distorts and suppresses data in such a way as to enhance his own claim to priority and primacy in AIDS research.'

§        'The [lead] Science paper contains numerous falsifications... the paper was replete with at least 22 incorrect statements concerning LTCB research, at least 11 of which were falsifications amounting to serious deviations from accepted standards for conducting and reporting evidence.'

§        'The absence of virtually any assay data for the parent cell line is simply unbelievable. [Especially since this was] used to develop and patent the HIV antibody blood test.'

§   Gallo, 'in violation of all research protocols, impeded scientists wanting to follow up on his research ... imposed on others the condition that they did not try to repeat his work.'

But despite the ORI supporting  this with the testimony of over 100 scientists, the Panel (made up by lawyers, not scientists) decided that Popovic and Gallo were innocent since the 'intent to deceive' was not proved. (Dr Mikulos Popovic was Gallo's chief investigative scientist and had co-signed all the science papers.)

But then came a report from the Secret Service, the body in charge of the security of the US president. They had been asked by the Congressional Investigation to examine the laboratory records tabled before the inquiries by Robert Gallo. They did so and found that many were tampered with prior to being presented as evidence. They traced indentations in their paper revealing that several were altered on the same day, despite them all having different dates on them. This was clear evidence of criminal fraud, or so they thought. They took it to the State Attorney General - but he ruled that too much time had passed since the alleged crime - and that Gallo was now protected by the Statute of Limitations. Thus he escaped crimial proceedings by the skin of his teeth.

Then the Inspector General issued a highly critical report, saying that there was little evidence for the existence of Gallo's HIV - and that it was doubtful that his claimed experiments were ever done. He damned the research on which the HIV tests were based. An immediate settlement was nowmade with the French. It was acknowledged by the NIH that the Institut Pasteur had found HIV first and was due loyalities for the HIV Test. Compensation was paid - and Gallo left the NIH shortly afterwards.

At the end of 1994 the Congressional Inquiry issued a final 'Staff Report', summing up what had been discovered by the various investigations. Among its conclusions were:

§        'The cover-up ... advanced to a more active phase in mid-March 1984, when Dr. Gallo systematically rewrote the manuscript for what would become a renowned LTCB paper (Popovic et al.; Science).' 

§        'The evidence is compelling that the oft-repeated [HIV] isolate claim -  ... dating from 1982/early 1983, are not true and were known to be untrue at the time the claims were made.'

§        'Many of the samples allegedly used for the pool [culture] were noted in the LTCB records to be contaminated with mould.'

§        'The notion that Dr. Popovic used such samples in an effort to obtain a high-titre virus-producing cell line defies credulity.'

§        'The [early] February 1984 experiment [said to prove HIV caused AIDS] was so faulty and so many aspects of it so questionable, that little or no confidence can be placed in any of its claimed findings.'

§        'Contrary to the claims of Gallo and Popovic, including claims in their patent applications [for the HIV Blood Test], several of the putative pool samples contained no HIV, while others did not even come from AIDS or pre-AIDS patients.'

The report concluded: 'The result was a costly, prolonged defence of the indefensible in which the LTCB 'science' became an integral element of the US government's public relations/advocacy efforts. The consequences for HIV research were severely damaging, leading, in part, to a corpus of scientific papers polluted with systematic exaggerations and outright falsehoods of unprecedented proportions.'

ROBERT GALLO TODAY

As can be seen from the 2002 clipping opposite, despite his HIV work being so rounded condemned for fraud and malpractice in 1994 as summarized above, despite the French being awarded the sole credit for the 'discovery' of HIV by the NIH after this , Gallo is still picking up awards as 'the discover of HIV.'

Recently Gallo recommended that antiretroviral chemotherapy be taken by those who merely suspect that they might have been infected - and a year later the CDC adopted this as its own policy - saying you should take them even if your fear only comes from a possibly faulty condom. Given the power and side effects of these drugs, (some of which are also marketed for cancer chemotherapy) this seems a recipe for disaster for many .

end - by Janine Roberts