What was claimed in the April 1984 press conference by Secretary of Health Margaret Heckler was (1) that we knew the cause of AIDS and had the data to convince the scientific community for the first time (this is more than a virus isolate or a few isolates), and (2) we had a life- saving, sensitive, and accurate blood test, which would, first of all, protect the blood supply and, secondly, allow the epidemic to be properly monitored for the first time. In her press release, Heckler noted the earlier isolation of what would probably turn out to be the same virus type by the French group. I said the same in my statements to the press. Let us not forget that the 1983 paper by Montagnier and coworkers did not claim their isolate caused AIDS, nor were their data available at that time to make the claim. There are ...
Gallo On Montagnier
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, 198
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