GALLO Investigated

What the Dingell staff's report had to say

Following are excerpts from the Dingell staff's report:

One of the most remarkable and regrettable aspects of the institutional response to the defense of Gallo et al is how readily public service and science apparently were subverted into defending the indefensible. Neither (HHS nor Justice Department) officials and attorneys, once the dispute was under way, (dealt) responsibly with the accumulating evidence that there were serious problems in the U.S. government's claims. Instead, they pushed on with their "litigation strategy," all the while adding deception to deception, consuming untold resources and squandering scientific and international good will.

The fraud became self-perpetuating. Defending the indefensible became a reflex, until ultimately, the cover-up was so burdened with falsehoods that its collapse was inevitable. HHS officials and attorneys should have recognized early on that the falsehoods could not be indefinitely sustained. But HHS sought only to "defend the position." HHS did not honor the public trust.

The violence to principles of responsible, ethical science was just as profound. At a crucial point early in the (Gallo laboratory's) HIV research, international politics and the technocrats committed to those politics virtually took over that research, claiming the laboratory's putative accomplishments as accomplishments of the United States administration and by extension, the United States itself.

Once done, the (Gallo laboratory's) interests became the government's interests; defending the (Gallo laboratory) scientists' reputations and claimed accomplishments became necessary for defending the honor of the United States. The defense thus became a consuming effort for significant portions of the U.S. government.

The result was a costly, prolonged defense of the indefensible in which the (Gallo laboratory's) "science" became an integral element of the U.S. 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. *

• quotes from the article: In Gallo case, truth termed a casualty
  
  

What Gallo had to say

Claims that Gallo et al. isolated HIV in 1982

Such claims were a central element of the U.S. Government's defense of the blood test patent of Gallo et al., because scientists at France's Institut Pasteur (IP) developed and applied for a patent on the HIV blood test months before Gallo et al. did so. The Staff Report documents with quotes from the principals that the claims of 1982 HIV isolates "were not true" (Executive Summary).

Gallo et al. in AIDS: Etiology, Diagnosis, Treatment and Prevention, 1985, p. 34. "The first HTLV-III [Gallo's name for HIV] isolates were obtained in this laboratory in November 1982, and HTLV-III was subsequently isolated from approximately 100 patients with AIDS or from healthy individuals at risk for AIDS." (Staff Report)

Salahuddin, Gallo, et al., PNAS 82, 1985 pp. 5530-34. "Since the fall of 1982, independent isolates of HTLV-III have been obtained in this laboratory...from 101 AIDS and ARC patients and healthy donors at risk for AIDS." (Staff Report)

Opposition of Gallo et al. to the Motion of Montagnier et al. for Judgment, November 1986, Interference Proceeding of the U.S. Patent and Trademark office (PTO), p. A8: "In late 1982 - early 1983, [Gallo] obtained a number of viral isolates including HTLV-III." (Executive Summary)

Preliminary Statement of Gallo et al., PTO Interference, 1986. "The first written description of the invention [the Gallo et al. HIV blood test] was made on December 15, 1982." (Staff Report)

Subsequent Shifts and contradictions

Gallo interview, Office of Scientific Integrity [OSI] 16 May 1990, transcript p. 110): "...you are asking me to defend something that I don't -- I don't claim we had the cause of AIDS discovered in February 1983 or December 1982..." (Staff Report)

Gallo remarks to the Chicago Tribune, published 19 November 1989. "The December '82 data is really marginal...The data were equivocal. At the time they were not even real data...The cells died. I can't make any claim for that. Some people would." (Staff Report)

Gallo, OSI interview 25 May 1990, transcript pp. 26-27: "I never made a claim in the literature for December '82 samples...We didn't publish these claims in any publication. I am a scientist. I go by what I publish." (Staff Report)

Gallo, OSI interview 16 May 1990, transcript pp. 103-104: [Concerning the PNAS claims cited above] "For all of '82? ...Can I have the reference? I would like to see that in writing if I said that... I don't believe I would have any reason to say that in PNAS. I mean, it doesn't sound like me." (Staff Report)

Gallo in an interview with the Subcommittee Staff (Executive Summary): "No one believed we really had that many isolates...No one believed we really meant that..."*
*quotes from:
Extract∙Institutional Response to the Blood Test Patent Dispute and Related Matters