Emerging Viruses-Aids & Ebola - By Leanard ... - preterhuman.net

membership in the WHO "lentivirus" or "slow" virus researchnetwork.Still, scientists remained doubtful about the importance of Gallo'swork and the future of retrovirus research altogether. Many stuckto the belief that such germs preyed mainly upon chickens, pigs,and cats. [7]So I suspected Gallo's early work probably involved chickens,pigs, and cats. That's interesting, I thought as I rememberedreading in Shilts's anthology that AIDS patients sufferedcomplications very similar to cats infected with feline leukemiavirus:"Both feline leukemia and this new gay disease were marked by atrail of opportunistic infections that seemed to take advantage ofan immune system weakened by a primary infection. In cats, theinfection was a leukemia virus that knocked out the cats' immunesystems and left them open to a number of cancers. Clearly, somesimilar virus was doing the same thing to these homosexual men,and they were getting cancer too. Secondly, feline leukemia has along incubation period; this new disease must have long latencytoo, which is the only way it was killing people in three cities onboth coasts before anybody even knew it existed." [7]Dr. Don Francis, one of the CDC's chief virologists, Shilts noted,quickly realized this association. Next, he examined the uniqueaffnity the mystery disease had to gays and intravenous drugusers, and how similar this was to the distribution of hepatitis Bcases. He rapidly concluded, "Combine these two diseases -feline leukemia and hepatitis - and you have the immunedeficiency." [8]Slow Start Against a ʺHotʺ New Virus"More than a year into the epidemic," Shilts reported, "theNationallnstitutes of Health had no coordinated AIDS plan.Everything was done on the basis of temporary assignments. . . .At Bob Gallo's lab at the NCI's Division of Tumor Cell Biology,"things could have been different, but they were much the same.Only "about 10 percent of the staff effort went into pokingaround the devastated lymphocytes of AIDS patients." This,despite the availability of generous NIH funding. [9]Even more suspicious was the fact that nearly a year after theNCI acknowledged the need to channel its resources to fight theoncoming epidemic, the institute withheld its request for fundingproposals, and failed to free available funds for AIDS researchersoutside Bethesda. [9]With all the financial resources at its disposal, and the earnestneed, why had they held up everyone's search for the AIDSvirus?Furthermore, Shilts wrote that by the end of 1982, "Gallo had had