Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 13, 1993 TAG: 9311130005
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Gallo, 56-year-old co-discoverer of the AIDS virus and head of a laboratory at the National Institutes of Health, said he was "completely vindicated" by the action.
But Dr. Lyle W. Bivens, head of the U.S. Public Health Service investigation of Gallo, repeated the allegations and said they were dropped only because his agency could not meet "a new definition of scientific misconduct" demanded by a review board.
Gallo's Washington attorney, Joe Onek, called Bivens' statement "outrageous" and hinted at future legal action by his client.
"He never got his day in court," said the lawyer. "But that may happen yet."
A hearing on Gallo's appeal of the charges had been scheduled for next week. He had been found guilty by the Public Health Service's Office of Research Integrity of failing to give proper credit to other researchers and with making a misstatement in a science publication.
"The reason that they didn't pursue the case is that the ORI knew that it couldn't prove its false charges before a fair and independent tribunal," Onek said.
In a statement welcoming the action, Gallo said, "I will now be able to redouble my efforts in the fight against AIDS and cancer."
Some in the scientific community said the murky conclusion of the long investigation leaves a cloud over Gallo's reputation, and one Nobel Prize winner called the whole process "a witch hunt" that found only "trivial" charges against Gallo.
Gallo and his laboratory colleagues published a series of articles in 1984 that identified and proved that a specific virus was the cause of AIDS.
French researchers shortly afterward claimed that the virus Gallo identified actually had been isolated earlier at the Pasteur Institute and that the Americans were falsely claiming credit for the discovery.
After negotiations, the issue was settled in 1987 with both the French and Americans agreeing to recognize Gallo and Pasteur researcher Dr. Luc Montagnier as co-discoverers of the AIDS virus. They also agreed to share royalties from the patent of an AIDS blood test developed in Gallo's lab.
The controversy was revived in 1989 after new charges were leveled against Gallo and a senior scientist in his lab, Dr. Mikulus Popovic. The ORI and its predecessor agencies at the NIH investigated and ruled in December that both Gallo and Popovic were guilty of misconduct in the 1984 AIDS research publications.
Additionally, the Pasteur Institute has hired a New York law firm to attempt to revise the 1987 agreement. That issue remains unsettled.
by CNB