Word: gallos
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...Gallo emerged as the villain, even in the early stages of HIV research. He refused to share supplies, from virus isolates to cell lines needed to grow the white blood cells necessary for research. Crewsdon holds Gallo accountable for the delay in AIDS research as Gallo wanted to be the first to isolate the virus that causes AIDS—even when NIH dictum commanded Gallo to share supplies and information with rival labs in the name of the search for scientific truth...
Crewdson, bogged down in the details only a microbiologist would care to understand, loses his reader amid a sea of technicalities and descriptions of virus strains until the drama of 1985. At this point, Gallo claimed to have discovered the virus that causes AIDS, dubbed HLTV-3B. With this virus, Gallo created the first blood antibody test and garnered all the accolades minus the Nobel Prize, including a nomination to the National Academy of Science...
Seeking the patent for the test and the profit and honor they deserved, the scientists of the Pasteur Institute sued the United States. The French claimed Gallo had stolen their virus to mass produce the antibody test. But the American antibody test, which used Gallo’s genetic sequence, produced false negatives at an alarming rate. Not only was Gallo wrong, but he refused to admit that he had made a mistake. As a result, Crewdson suggests that Gallo is single-handedly responsible for delaying the development of an accurate HIV test...
Science Fictions switches from textbook to maudlin TV movie as Crewdson relates cases of innocent hemophiliacs given tainted transfusions, birthing mothers who received bad blood and otherwise healthy people whose infections could have been prevented if Gallo had acknowledged his error...
After the French sued Gallo and the Department of Health and Human Services, Gallo admitted his errors and the Red Cross adopted the French version of the antibody test. But Gallo’s fall from grace and the revelation of his illegal and unethical manipulation of data feel anti-climatic. In fact, the tedium of the nearly six-year government investigation, with its 300 pages of Congressional evidence, makes Science Fictions feel more like a Lexis-Nexus search than a story of scientific sleuthing. Instead of mentioning every slip-up, Crewdson could have focused on Gallo?...