We interrupt the steady diet of bad news to announce the long delayed award of the Nobel Prize to the discoverers of the AIDS virus. This is terrific news and I may even improve (slightly) my opinion of the Nobel Committee that awarded a prize to Al Gore, a phony political figure. In my history of medicine, I told the story of the discovery of the virus and its identification as a retrovirus.
Half of the award will be shared by two French virologists, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, 61, and Luc A. Montagnier, 76, for discovering H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Conspicuously omitted was Dr. Robert C. Gallo, an American virologist who vied with the French team in a long, often acrimonious dispute over credit for the discovery of H.I.V.
In my chapter on this discovery, I despaired of any recognition of these two great scientists because of the lying and cheating of Robert Gallo. At last, they get the recognition they deserve. A good source, and one I used for my chapter on the story, is Science Fictions, an excellent book by Chicago Tribune science reporter John Crewdson. The book came out of a newspaper series in the 1980s that clearly described Gallo’s attempt to steal credit. For years after publication of the book, there was a famous negative review of it on Amazon, signed by “a reader from Baltimore.” The joke was that everyone familiar with the story knew it was Gallo who had written the review.
I am so happy to see these two French scientists, who at the time comprised the entire retrovirus section of the Pasteur Institute, receive credit at last.
It looks as though Gallo is still trying to defend himself with attacks on the book. The Nobel Prize is all the more welcome to refute his allegations.
