The Mad-Doctor Gallo

[Tom Keske]

THE MAD-DOCTOR GALLO

Dr. Robert Gallo, the "Father of Human Retrovirology", the most-often cited
scientist of the 1980s, America's premier AIDS researcher, is at the
center of some of the strangest coincidences that surround the AIDS
epidemic.  He was announcing discovery of the first-known human
retrovirus (HTLV) almost simultaneously with the outbreak of AIDS, also
destined to be revealed as a retrovirus (HIV).

What kind of man is Robert Gallo?  What are his politics?  His attitudes
toward gays?  Would he tolerate unsafe experiments on human subjects?
Might he have been doing secret work for the DOD or CIA?

In a sense, this last question is difficult to answer, because our
government
has adopted a policy that the identities of scientists doing secret research
will be kept from the public.  In another sense, the question is simple
to answer.  By Gallo's own characterization, "all the most important
virus people" in the country were in his lab.  It would not be
characteristic of our government to settle for second-best.  It
would have had nowhere else to go, for virtually any secret research
that it may have conducted.

Gallo's right-wing politics, as well as his lack of ethics, are made
clear in a remark to David Gillespie, Gallo's second-in-command.
Gillespie remarked what a bad President that Richard Nixon had
been, thinking that the ends justified the means.  Gallo responded,
"Nixon did exactly the right thing.  It's unfortunate that he was
caught." [1]

Of his attitude toward gays, Gallo is defensive:

   "Later, it would be suggested that the research establishment,
     myself included, had been slow to show interest in the disease
     because it seemed to affect primarily the homosexual population.
     Such thinking shows a failure to understand how scientists choose
     what to work on.  Scientists are drawn to problems that seem capable
     of solution given the present state of knowledge."  [2]

Again, a remark made to a fellow AIDS researcher is more revealing.
The researcher was having difficulty duplicating Gallo's results, and
thought that the difference might relate to the risk group to which
the victim belonged.  He inquired if the victim might be a Haitian
or hemophiliac.  Said Gallo, "It was a f***ing fag".[1]

It was also common for Gallo to smear his critics as being gay
or mentally disturbed.  He leveled this charge at colleague
Peter Duesberg, a well-known virologist and "AIDS dissident", and
a member of the National Academy of Scientists.

He also apparently leveled the same charge against a critical,
Pulitzer prize winning journalist, John Crewdson, of the Chicago
Tribune. [3]

When Crewdson was breaking the story of Gallo's theft of
the French virus, LAV, he was hit with rumors about him
divorcing his wife and joining a gay commune in San
Francisco.

In contrast to Gallo's support of Nixon's crimes, Crewdson was
one of the courageous journalists who had helped to
break several stories that led to some of the articles of impeachment
against Nixon.

Gallo's house in Bethesda, a posh suburb of Washington D.C.,
was broken into, and papers concerning his vaccine work
were rifled through.  Gallo accused Crewdson of the crime
to Bethesda police, which the police later decided was
without foundation.

While it was common for Gallo to portray his critics as being
mentally unstable, it is questionable whether Gallo himself
crossed the line between mere vanity and neuroticism,
to genuine mental instability.

At a lab party, Gallo was once observed arguing strenuously
with an eight year-old girl over who had the better
hand-writing.

Gallo was prone to making middle-of-the-night prank calls
to his competitors.

A former employee described how, when Gallo was losing
at tennis, he would hit the ball 6 feet out, and say "That isn't
out, that's in."  He would rant and rave until he had his way.

Gallo once took an envelope from his pocket, and told
Swedish epidemiologist Michael Koch, "Here, I have a
five-step program to destroy you."

Gallo once fired Frank Ruscetti, a cell biologist, who
asked why he was being fired.  Gallo responded,

"Well, because you're getting too much credit."

Past and present employees of Gallo's lab described
it as "a den of thieves".  In its quantity of intrigue and
capricious purges, it resembled a "medieval Italian
Town", says one former employee.  He adds, "I'm
surprised that somebody hasn't killed somebody
there." [1]

Gallo's theft of LAV was no subtle, class act.  He
took the French virus, simply renamed it, claimed that
their virus had been no good.  Later tests on what
he claimed to be "his" virus, were definitely
shown to have far too high a similarity to the
French samples, to have been cultivated
independently.

In this atmosphere, Gallo necessarily surrounded himself with
yes-people.

One of those yes-people was Dr. Beatrice Hahn, the researcher
who recently made announcements concerning a chimp virus
that was highly similar to HIV.  This announcement led to an overhyped,
orchestrated media event, which argued illogically that it "disproved"
theories about vaccine contamination (an obvious untruth, because
chimp tissues were also involved in preparation of suspect vaccines).

Dr. Hahn, a former employee in Gallo's lab, had characterized the LAV
theft  as an "honest mistake." [1].

The announcement of the chimp virus seems to continue
the tradition of glory-seeking at the expense of truth.

It was actually old-hat news, trumped up as something dramatic,
original and "new".  In Gallo's "Virus Hunting" book, copyrighted
1991,  there is a buried  reference on page 227,

    "There have, in fact, been very recent reports of an isolate
     from a chimp with an SIV closer to HIV-1 than any prior
     SIV isolates."

This was written years before Hahn's "discovery."

The obsessive glory-seeking, however, is a small matter
of pettiness, a focus of excessive attention, that obscures
more serious problems.

Following up on Crewdson's investigations of 1990
the NIH acknowledged that Gallo had "repeatedly
ignored federal regulations intended to protect subjects
from risk."  Vaccine trials had actually killed three patients.
Gallo, who knew of the deaths, never reported them. [2]

The portrait of Mad-Doctor Gallo is fairly complete:
a vain, paranoid, petty, vindictive, unscrupulous,
right-wing, homophobic, and possibly mentally
unbalanced scientist, working with probable
government/military/intelligence connections, experimenting
since the early 1970s with AIDS-like monkey viruses and
retroviruses, and having a disregard for the safety of human
test subjects.

Any questions?

Tom Keske
Boston, Mass.

[1] Lab Rat: What AID Searcher Dr. Robert Gallo
      Did in Pursuit of the Nobel Prize, Seth Roberts,
      Spy.  http"//www.virusmyth.com/aids/data/srlabrat.htm

[2] Virus Hunting:  AIDS, Cancer & the Human Retrovirus,
      by Robert Gallo

[3] By AIDS Obsessed, by Barry Werth,  GQ Aug 1991
      http://search.excite.com/reloc...h.com/aids/data/
      bwobsessed.htm