With a powerful group of local backers to ease the transition, controversial virologist Robert Gallo hopes for a fresh start, both personally and scientifically, when his Institute of Human Virology opens its doors this fall. The new institute, intended to advance the fight against AIDS and other diseases, will be affiliated with the University of Maryland at Baltimore.

And it appears that his fellow scientists -- with a few sharp exceptions -- are ready to let accusations of scientific misconduct that have marked the last decade of his 30-year career at the National Institutes of Health fade. Indeed, many support him and wish him success in his endeavor.

"Gallo is a rare resource," asserts William Haseltine, chairman and chief executive officer of Human Genome Sciences Inc., a biotechnology company in Rockville, Md., and a former Harvard Medical School AIDS investigator. "He's one of our finest scientists, enormously imaginative and very...

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