Robert Gallo

Robert Charles Gallo (born March 23, 1937) is a U.S. biomedical researcher. He is best known for his role in identifying the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) as the infectious agent responsible for the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) although his role in this discovery remains controversial. Gallo is currently the director of the Institute for Human Virology, an institution affiliated with the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute. He is also cofounder of Profectus BioSciences, Inc. in Baltimore, Maryland.

Background

Gallo was born in Waterbury, Connecticut to a working-class family of Italian immigrants. He earned a B.S. degree in Biology in 1959 from Providence College and received an M.D. from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1963. After completing his medical residency and internship at the University of Chicago, he became a researcher at the National Cancer Institute. Gallo states that his choice of profession was influenced by the early death of his sister from leukemia, a disease to which he initially dedicated much of his research.

Retrovirus work

After listening to a talk by biologist David Baltimore, Gallo became interested in the study of retroviruses. In 1974 he identified the first retrovirus in humans: the "human T-cell leukemia virus," or HTLV. In 1984, Gallo and his collaborators published a series of four papers in the research journal Science arguing that HIV, a retrovirus that had recently been identified in AIDS patients by Luc Montagnier and his collaborators at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France, was the cause of AIDS. However, the striking similarity between the first two human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) isolates Lai/LAV (formerly LAV, isolated at the Pasteur Institute) and Lai/IIIB (formerly HTLV-IIIB, reported to be isolated from a pooled culture at the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology (LTCB) of the National Cancer Institute) provoked considerable controversy in light of the high level of variability found among subsequent HIV-1 isolates.

Since then, there has been considerable and often acrimonious controversy over the priority for the discovery of HIV, including accusations that Gallo improperly used a sample of HIV produced at the Institut Pasteur. In November 1990, the Office of Scientific Integrity at the National Institutes of Health commissioned a group at Roche to analyse archival samples established at the Pasteur Institute and the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology (LTCB) of the National Cancer Institute between 1983 and 1985. Retrospective analyses showed that contamination of a culture derived from patient BRU by one from patient LAI was responsible for the provenance of HIV-1 Lai/LAV; the contaminated culture (M2T-/B) was sent to LTCB in September 1983.

Chang et al. (1993) examined archival specimens and reported in Nature the detection of six novel HIV-1 sequences in the cultures used to establish the pool: none was closely related to HIV-1 Lai/IIIB. A sample derived from patient LAI contained variants of both HIV-1 Lai/IIIB and HIV-1 Lai/LAV, and a sequence identical to a variant of HIV-1 Lai/IIIB was detected in the contaminated M2T-/B culture. They concluded that the pool, and probably another LTCB culture, MoV, were contaminated between October 1983 and early 1984 by variants of HIV-1 Lai from the M2T-/B culture. Therefore, the origin of the HIV-1 Lai/IIIB isolate also was patient LAI.

However, today it is generally agreed that Montagnier's group was the first to identify HIV, although Gallo's group insists it contributed significantly to demonstrating that it causes AIDS. Furthermore, Gallo's group claim they were the first to grow the virus in an immortalized cell line, leading to the development of blood tests for HIV and the ability to screen donated blood for this virus. Also, Gallo insisted the work of Montagnier had relied on a technique previously developed by Gallo for growing T cells in the laboratory by supplementing interleukin-2. The two scientists continued to dispute each other's claims until 1987, when they finally agreed to share credit for the discovery of HIV.

In 1995, Gallo published his discovery that chemokines, a class of naturally occurring compounds, can block HIV and halt the progression of AIDS. This was heralded as by Science magazine as one of the top scientific breakthroughs within the same year of his publication, but has yet to result in any actual therapetic benefits. ^* The role of protection chemokines plays for controlling progression of HIV infection to AIDS has been influencing medical thinking on how AIDS works against the human body. It is regarded as having great potential in playing a future role in possible vaccine development. (See: .)

Criticism

Dr. Gallo is extremely competitive and has been accused of stealing his major discoveries from others. Critics argue that his fight to patent a device to detect whether blood is infected with AIDS delayed the technology's use for a whole year, leading many to die. He has received criticism from the gay community over issues regarding AIDS, principally based on views expressed about him in the book and movie And the Band Played On, written by Randy Shilts. Other criticisms include the Chicago Tribune supplement by John Crewdson, Science Fictions: A Scientific Mystery, A Massive Cover-Up, and the Dark Legacy of Robert Gallo and Spy magazine's Lab rat: What AIDS researcher Dr. Robert Gallo did in pursuit of the Nobel Prize, and what he didn't do in pursuit of a cure for AIDS.

Inconvenient Procedure

On the not inconsiderable matter of an explanation of why HIV did not behave in accordance with Koch's Postulates (three rules by which the medical profession generally adhere in their attempts to identify a pathogenic illness), Gallo is quoted as replying "Rules were needed then, and can be helpful now, but not if they are too blindly followed. Robert Koch, a great microbiologist, has suffered from a malady that affects many other great men: he has been taken too literally and too seriously for too long" (Gallo Robert C virus Hunting - AIDS, Cancer, and the Human Retrovirus: A Story of Scientific Discovery, Basic Books, New York, 1991).

As Authors Steven Ransom and Phillip Day note: "Gallo... saw no problem dismissing one of science's time-tested, primary check and balance systems... Koch's Postulates have remained one of medicine's primary benchmarks for over a century. Now, because they do not fit the HIV profile but rather expose it flawed and unreliable, they are apparently not to be "...taken too literally and too seriously..." (Steven Ransom and Phillip Day World Without AIDS, Credence Publications, 2000).

Such blithely cavalier attitudes to established scientific procedure, coupled with Gallo's controversial track record regarding verifiable/peer-reviewed results led many 'dissident' researchers and scientists to contend that HIV does not in fact exist; a claim supported in part by the astounding fact that no photographs yet exist of the virus itself, and those purporting to be so are 'knobless', in other words, cannot attach themselves to cells - a prerequisite for such a supposedly aggressive self-replicating viral form Is No HIV Virus - An interview with Dr Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos By Christine Johnson: Continuum Autumn 1997.

As Anti-HIV activist Michael Verney-Elliott succinctly summarizes: "Congratulations. From the people who didn't bring you the virus that causes cancer, it's the virus that doesn't cause AIDS." (Christine Maggiore, ibid)

External links

Robert Charles Gallo | Robert Gallo

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Background

Retrovirus work

Criticism

Inconvenient Procedure

External links