In his comment (April 4, 1988, page 8) to my opinion (November 30, 1987, page 11), Howard Temin either missed or misinterpreted the point had tried to make. I was concerned with the fact that the ubiquitous spread of CD-HeLa cells might expand the habitat of HIV not the host range. In addition to the increased use of such modified HeLa cells for large scale production of HIV or for virus research, accidental spread of such cells could contaminate other cells cultures without the researchers knowing it.
Two reports in the last few months have increased my concern. In a paper in Nature (April 21, 1988, page 731) on transduction of endogenous envelope genes by feline leukemia virus, Overbaugh et al state: “In vitro propagation of retrovirus may result in the generation of variants with very different properties.” Temin does not allay my suspicion that a mutation that increases virulence ...
