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

the footprints of a retrovirus allover the lymphocytes. But it wasimpossible to find the damned retrovirus itself [emphasisadded] That was the rub."In addition, Gallo's staff couldn't keep the lymphocytes alive.They died. Any leukemia virus, Gallo knew, caused theproliferation of cells, not their death. People with leukemia havetoo many white blood cells. When Gallo's staff addedlymphocytes from the blood from AIDS patients, however, tolymphocytes in culture, the lymphocytes would die without anyproliferation. The frustration was galling and, by November,Gallo had made what would prove to be among the mostimportant decisions of his career. He gave Up. [16]This doesn't make any sense, I thought. Gallo discoveredinterleuken-II. Six months earlier, "an associate of Gallo said thathe had started culturing lymphocytes from a GRID patient in aspecial culture medium Gallo had developed that containedinterleukin-II." The IL-II, Don Francis recognized was a perfectaddition to a growth medium for lymphocytes. "By easily beingable to grow lymphocytes, Gallo had already overcome aformidable research barrier," Shilts reported. [11]Now, I considered, Gallo was quitting because he allegedlycouldn't keep infected lymphocytes alive long enough to studythem or isolate their attackers. I found both hard to believe. Firstof all, the French discovered how to keep their lymphocytes alivequite rapidly. Why couldn't Gallo who had far more experiencein the field? Second, Shilts noted earlier Margaret Heckler'scorrect comment that Gallo alone had discovered how toreproduce the virus in large enough quantities to develop a bloodtest - a test used by the French as early as 1982. [20] Third, toreproduce the virus, he needed the cell lines in which to growthem - lymphocytes which he had apparently kept alive longbefore the French. Fourth, if the French had isolated AIDSviruses using Gallo's largely inactivated antibodies to tag them,then how come Gallo couldn't find them with his superior-qualityreagents? And finally, seasoned researchers just don't give up soeasily.But that was not the worst of it. Following the official UnitedStates government announcement that Gallo had discovered theAIDS virus, Shilts wrote:"How timely was the discovery of the long-sought AIDS virus? ..As it turned out, the AIDS virus was not a particularlydifficult virus to find. The French took all of three weeks todiscover LAV [emphasis added] and had published their firstpaper on it within four months. This early publication lacked thecertainty of a definitive discovery, but the French had enoughevidence toassert they had found the cause of AIDS by the summer of 1983,seven or eight months into the research process." [22]