Science Fictions

John Crewdson

Describes the competition between scientists--including Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute--over credit for the discovery of the HIV virus in a study that offers a revealing look at how scientific and research laboratories really work. In 1983 Gallo, of the National Cancer Institute, and a group of scientists at Paris's Pasteur Institute announced their isolating of separate AIDS viruses. The stakes--moneyed prizes and patents, not to mention cures--were stratospheric. By 1985, the Pasteur Institute filed suit claiming that Gallo--whose discovery was actually a dead end--had appropriated "their" virus as his own. In 1992, the National Academy of Sciences agreed, accusing Gallo of "intellectual recklessness" and "essentially immoral" behavior.