At last, the great Franco-American virus war may be nearing its end. For six years, Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier, the co-discoverers of HIV, have been entangled in a highly publicised row over the origins of the first known strain of the virus. The row was fuelled by allegations that Gallo deliberately took the strain from samples sent to him by Montagnier and used it as his own to make a profitable blood test.
Now, a study has confirmed that the virus came from Montagnier's laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in France. Gallo says the findings point to accidental contamination of his samples by the French strain.
An inquiry by Gallo's employer, the National Institutes of Health, has already officially cleared him of stealing the French strain (This Week, 13 October 1990) because, it said, he had so many strains available that he would have had no motive to steal ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.