NIH’s Robert Gallo

Formal investigation "is warranted" of Gallo's National Cancer Institute Laboratory, National Institutes of Health Acting Director William Raub announced Oct. 5. The investigation will focus on several aspects of published reports from Gallo's lab, particularly the article by Mika Popovic, et al., published in the May 1984 issue of Science, that first described HIV. The investigation will also conduct tests to determine the origins of the HTLV-IIIB virus that Gallo and his colleagues used to develop the blood test for HIV. Raub noted that the initial inquiry into Gallo's research by NIH's Office of Scientific Integrity "has resolved certain of the publicized allegations and issues or shown them to be without substance. In particular, the inquiry team has concluded that Dr. Gallo had a substantial number of HIV detections and isolations from several different sources at the critical time that HTLV-IIIB (the principal virus isolated by the Gallo laboratory) and LAV (the virus isolated by the Pasteur Institute) were being grown in Gallo's laboratory".