Subject: U. S. Health Agency Opens Investigation Into Gallo's Research on AIDS Virus 
Date: Published: 10/8/90 (102 lines)
Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc.

    Technology & Medicine:
    U. S. Health Agency Opens Investigation
    Into Gallo's Research on AIDS Virus
    ----
    By Marilyn Chase
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    BETHESDA, Md.  -- The National Institutes of Health opened
 an investigation of federal scientist Robert C. Gallo and his
 research on the AIDS virus.
    Under review are articles describing identification of the
 AIDS virus by Dr. Gallo's team, the source of that virus and
 apparent discrepancies between the articles and laboratory
 notebook entries.
    Acting NIH director William F. Raub said a preliminary
 inquiry eliminated certain allegations but indicated that
 "there is substantial reason to believe scientific misconduct
 may have occurred in some instances."  The NIH Office of
 Scientific Integrity is conducting the probe with a panel
 named by the National Academy of Sciences and Institute of
 Medicine.
    In an interview, Dr. Raub said the probe "doesn't perforce
 call into question the outcome of {Dr. Gallo's work}, namely,
 the creation of a successful blood test for AIDS.  " Nor have
 investigators found any evidence of misappropriation, he
 added.
    "By definition, this is an investigation.  The outcome
 could be anything from exoneration of the individuals
 involved to the other extreme -- a finding of some form of
 scientific misconduct," Dr. Raub said.  "That's different from
 bringing a charge and prosecuting it.  This isn't a judidical
 proceeding."
    In an interview, Dr. Gallo, chief of the laboratory of
 tumor cell biology at the National Cancer Institute, said
 that he is "troubled" by the investigation but that he is
 reassured the probe turns on details of scientific
 methodology rather than charges of theft.
    At stake are claims by Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur
 Institute of Paris.  The dispute stems from identification of
 the AIDS virus by the French in 1983 and the Americans in
 1984.  It centers on an antibody test patented by the U. S. 
 team in 1985 and now in use world-wide.  A strain of the virus
 named HTLV-IIIB by Dr. Gallo is nearly identical to a
 previously identified French virus named LAV, leading to
 charges that the U. S. work was based on samples contaminated
 by the French virus or misappropriated outright.
    A lawsuit by Dr. Montagnier and the Pasteur Institute was
 settled in 1987 when the teams agreed to share credit for the
 discovery and royalties on the sale of test kits.
    The charges were re-ignited last year by the publication
 of a 50,000-word article by Chicago Tribune reporter John
 Crewdson concluding that theft had occurred.  The article
 aroused the interest of Rep. John Dingell (D., Mich.)  , who
 requested that NIH investigate.
    Dr. Montagnier has deferred to the NIH investigation but
 has said Dr. Gallo should acknowledge the probability of
 contamination.  "The agreement we signed {in 1987} conceded
 the possibility of cross-contamination," Dr. Gallo said in an
 interview.  "There isn't certain proof."
    Dr. Raub said the NIH Office of Scientific Integrity had
 "resolved certain of the publicized allegations and issues or
 shown them to be without substance" -- including a charge
 that the Gallo team had nothing of its own to analyze when
 the French sent a sample of their virus.
    "The inquiry team has concluded that Dr. Gallo had a
 substantial number of {virus} detections and isolations from
 several different sources at the critical time that HTLV-IIIB
 and LAV were being grown in Gallo's laboratory."
    However, Dr. Raub said, "I have determined ...that
 certain issues identified during the inquiry phase warrant a
 formal investigation.  The investigation will focus on several
 aspects of published reports from Dr. Gallo's laboratory,"
 especially an article in May 1984 in the journal Science by
 Dr. Gallo and his colleague Mikulas Popovic.  Dr. Popovic was
 said to be traveling in Czechoslovakia and unavailable.
    Subjects of the investigation are Dr. Gallo and Dr. 
 Popovic, who conducted much of the laboratory work and
 succeeded in getting reluctant virus cultures to grow, in
 part, by pooling and mixing them, a practice leading to the
 contamination theory.
    Dr. Raub's statement said the investigation also will
 include "testing a number of biological samples in an effort
 to determine the origins of HTLV-IIIB, the virus that Dr. 
 Gallo and his colleagues used to develop the blood test" for
 AIDS.  
    Dr. Gallo said he was encouraged that the inquiry seems to
 focus on issues of scientific housekeeping, methodology and
 notebook keeping.
    His attorney, Joseph Onek, asserted that ethical charges
 aren't at stake.  "There is no investigation as to whether Bob
 Gallo intentionally misappropriated the French virus," he
 argued.  "It is the opposite.  It's to explore the possibility
 that there wasn't even accidental misappropriation."

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