Word: pasteur
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Robert Gallo and his colleagues from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., announced in 1984 that they had isolated the AIDS virus. But it turned out to be virtually identical to one that had already been cultured in the lab of Dr. Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. That was surprising, since strains of the AIDS virus from different people have noticeably different genetic structures...
...occasion was somewhat marred by the claims of a French researcher, Dr. Dominique Stehelin, that he deserved at least part of the prize. Stehelin, who assisted in the UCSF study but is now at the Pasteur Institute in Lille, France, called his omission "very unfair and rotten." But others who were present at the time of the original experiments said that Stehelin, though a key member of the research team, nevertheless worked under the supervision of Varmus and Bishop. The Nobel Committee stood by its decision...
...Louis Pasteur, a French microbiologist, concocted a vaccine against chicken cholera after discovering that weakened cholera organisms, while incapable of making chickens sick, would immunize them against the malady. Pasteur, who is credited with founding the science of immunology, went on to create a human rabies vaccine from the brains of rabies-infected sheep and rabbits...
Building on Pasteur's work, 20th century scientists have learned to mass- produce bacteria and viruses, then weaken or kill them and use them as the major ingredient in vaccines for such varied diseases as typhus, yellow fever, influenza, polio, measles and rubella. Unfortunately, the vaccines occasionally cause the disease they are designed to ward off. (Reason: the "killed" viruses sometimes survive, while the weakened versions often fail to cause an immune response.) In general, however, the vaccines have been quite effective; in recent years the National Academy of Sciences has reported only a handful of polio and diphtheria cases...
Shilts contends that as part of the Administration's efforts to distract attention from its inadequate financing and poor leadership, the U.S. Government "brazenly" conspired to steal credit for discovering the AIDS virus from researchers at France's Pasteur Institute. He dismisses as a myth the competing claim of Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute and, quoting U.S. researchers, strongly implies that Gallo stole the French strain and presented it as his own, a charge Gallo denies. Shilts labels as a "pleasant fiction" a 1987 U.S.-French political accord that settled lawsuits and deemed Gallo and France...