I was pleased with the interview with Luc Montagnier that appeared in The Scientist [Dec. 13, 1993, page 11]. Montagnier's statements, as far as I am concerned, are fair and accurate. Indeed, he has made it abundantly clear that once we knew the viruses from his lab and mine were the same subtype, there was never any doubt that the paper of Montagnier and coworkers was the first (F. Barre-Sinoussi, et al., Science, 220:868-71, 1983) to identify the virus later (M. Popovic, et al., Science, 224:497, 1984; R. Gallo, et al., Science, 224:500, 1984; J. Schutbach, et al., Science, 224:503, 1984; M.G. Sarngadharan, et al., Science, 224:506, 1984) shown to be the AIDS virus. The opening statements in your article highlight the "Acrimonious debate over who discovered the virus...." This was never a debate, nor is it fair to imply "Gallo was claiming all the credit for himself."...
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