Subject: Six Researchers Receive Lasker Awards for 1986
Date: Published: 9/23/86 39 lines
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

   Six Researchers Receive
   Lasker Awards for 1986

   NEW YORK -- Six reseachers in the fields of AIDS, cellular
growth and venereal disease, received the 1986 Albert Lasker
Medical Research and Public Service Awards.
   In the field of AIDS, the awards went to Luc Montagnier of
the Pasteur Institute "for his discovery of a retrovirus
which later proved to be the cause of acquired immune
deficiency syndrome"; Robert C. Gallo of the National Cancer
Institute "for earlier discoveries of the first two human
retroviruses" and for proving the new virus was the cause of
AIDS, and Myron E. Essex of Harvard University for
demonstrating the links between such viral infections and
immune suppression in animals and humans.
   The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation sponsors the awards
which carry a $15,000 honorarium.  They command special
interest in scientific circles because they often are a
precursor to the Nobel Prize.  Since 1944, 42 Lasker award
winners have become Nobel laureates.
   This year's awards were carefully and diplomatically
worded because of a pending lawsuit by the Pasteur Institute
against Dr. Gallo for allegedly misappropriating Dr. 
Montagnier's research, a charge Dr. Gallo denies.
   Other 1986 Lasker awards went to:  Rita Levi-Montalcini of
Rome and Stanley Cohen of Vanderbilt University for their
separate studies illuminating the mechanisms of cell growth;
and to Ma Haide of the Ministry of Public Health in Beijing,
for his work in combating venereal disease in China.

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