Leonard Pattenden wrote:
> I have shown the
> Virology 230 papers were not about "non-isolation" or it's
> "impossibility". It was about microvesicle contamination.
Leonard, maybe you can help me with a question I've never gotten
a good answer to. With all this microvesicle contamination that
comes along with "HIV" when it is purified on sucrose gradients
(at least until recently, when a paper you know about found that
protease treatment of the gradient fraction containing "HIV"
could remove up to 95% of the contaminants, mostly actin), how
did Dr Gallo generate antibodies to "HIV" in a rabbit back in
1984 in the _Science_ papers that made him so famous? There is
no information about what was used as an antigen, but I think
it is probably safe to assume that it was density gradient
purified material, which as one of those recent _Virology_ papers
shows, is at best half "HIV" and half cellular proteins. The
coomassie stained PAGE in this paper of the gradient purified
material is not very impressive either, as far as using this as
an antigen -- there are proteins that run the entire gamut of
molecular weights!
How could he claim that the antibodies from the rabbit were
specific for "HIV" given that the antigen could not possibly
have been pure "HIV" and that apparently, at that time, no one
had really investigated methods of trying to further purfiy
"HIV"?
Todd Miller, PhD
