MacFormat España 17/MacFormat 17 (Spain)/MacFormat 17.bin/DATABASE/BODY/CU124.TXT

Text File | 1996-03-13 | 12.1 KB | 262 lines

1.5
When the Auto-Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Aids) was
first identified in homosexual men the cause was unknown.
Montagnier and Gallo  were among scientists already working
on theories that certain viruses caused some cancers and
leukaemias. Gallo had discovered retroviruses, theorising that
they caused leukaemia, and became the first to isolate one -
HTLV-1 - from a cancer patient. By the time he was
appointed director of Aids research at the US National Cancer
Institute he had isolated another - HTLV-2. He thought there
was a connection between HTLV and Aids. Montagnier led a
team at the Institut Pasteur in Paris which, in 1983, was
given a tissue sample from a patient suspected of the pre-
Aids condition. Following an elaborate technique for
detecting retro-viruses, one was found - but with different
characteristics from the HTLVs. Montagnier published
photographs of his virus - which he called LAV - in May
1983. Montagnier's findings were virtually ignored, delaying
by a year the development of reliable tests, and in 1984
Gallo claimed prior discovery of HTLV-3 as the cause of Aids.
At first Gallo and Montagnier seemed to have isolated
different viruses. Later it was accepted that the viruses were
identical and to be known as HIV (Human Immunedeficiency
Virus), and that Montagnier and Gallo were "co-discoverers".
New evidence suggested Montagnier was right and Gallo's
discoveries were contaminated by French samples sent to
him. At stake are big royalty payments from the sales of
Aids-test kits. Nobel plaudits seem unlikely after the years of
contention
@
2.2
Science, once a quiet backwater occupied by dreamy dons
with obsessive interest in obscure subjects, is beginning to
seem every bit as cut-throat as big business.  Almost every
week there are claims of fraud or misdemeanour, arguments
about priority, and challenges to the integrity of research
workers.

Once started, such challenges have a tendency, like a soap-
opera, to run and run.  This week, for example, the seven-
year row over who discovered the virus that causes Aids has
entered a new phase.  An official American investigation has
concluded that one of the scientists credited with the
discovery was guilty of "creating and fostering" an
atmosphere conducive to fraud in his laboratory at the
United States National Cancer Institute near Washington.

Robert Gallo, the scientist concerned, has so far made no
public comment on the leaked draft of the investigator's
report, though his lawyers say that it is inaccurate and only
an early draft.  After years of denial, Dr Gallo recently
admitted that the virus identified by his laboratory had
reached him from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, but most
people believed that was the result of confusion rather than
dishonesty.

The report appears to make rather more serious charges,
suggesting that Dr Gallo had erased from his original paper a
reference to the fact that an assistant, Mikulas Popovic, had
grown a sample of the Pasteur virus.  By turning a blind eye
to his colleague's actions, Dr Gallo merited "significant
censure", the report is believed to say.

The saga of the Aids virus, which has rumbled threateningly
ever since Dr Gallo and Dr Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur
Institute in Paris first contested primacy back in 1984, looks
likely to encompass a few more chapters yet.  At stake are
not just academic honours, or even Nobel Prizes, but the
substantial royalties that are expected to be earned from test
kits that use the original finding.

The fuss over Aids is not, alas, an isolated incident.  The more
triumphs the biologists celebrate, the more understanding
they gain of the innermost workings of the human cell, the
higher the potential rewards and the greater the temptation
to cheat.  The danger is that the old relationships, the easy to
and fro between laboratories which has enabled scientists to
share data and specimens freely, will be sacrificed and with
it will go much of the impetus behind discovery.

This week, the European parliament has been discussing the
question of patenting life forms, a step that the US Patent
Office took three years ago when it granted a patent to
Harvard University for a mouse which incorporated a gene
predisposing it to cancer.  If Europe follows the same route,
many discoveries by scientists working in biology will
acquire the status of inventions.  The machinery of the cell
will be as patentable as a new engine, or a new kind of
microchip, a change that will surely further increase the
pressures on scientists.

Already, many biologists working in exciting areas of
molecular biology think first of seeking patents, and only
second of publishing their work so that others can read and
repeat it.

To fail to do so in the tough climate of the 1990s would be
foolish-the Medical Research Council has never been forgiven
for failing to patent the discovery of monoclonal antibodies
by Cedar Milstein at the Molecular Biology Laboratory at
Cambridge.  For biology it represents a loss of innocence.

More insidious are the pressures to claim results even when
they cannot be justified.  In America, one of the greatest
growth areas in science over the past decade has been the
caseload of the Office of Scientific Integrity (OSI), a
department of the National Institutes of Health.  During 1990,
OSI uncovered six cases of data fabrication, five of
plagiarism, and seven of other "deviant" scientific behaviour
involving dishonesty of one sort or another.  OSI has 70 cases
on its books.

Does it matter very much if science succumbs to the same
mores that have long governed business?  The answer is that
it may, if the result is to dry up the free flow of
communication that makes science work so well.  If nothing
can be taken on trust, the very essence of the scientific
method might be lost, and that would be a tragedy for all of
us.
@
2.5
The viruses which cause Aids may have existed among
humans more than 100 years ago and will continue to
threaten mankind far into the next century, Professor Luc
Montagnier, the leading French researcher, said yesterday.

Professor Montagnier, of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, first
identified the virus now known as HIV-1 four years ago.  His
latest work, published today in Nature, the British scientific
journal, casts new light on its origins and those of a second
virus, HIV-2, which he has also discovered.

It warns that others may emerge and suggests that HIV-2
will be a serious threat to public health in Africa and is likely
to spread in Europe.  Cases of disease caused by the second
virus have already been identified in France, Germany and
Sweden, since its discovery in late 1985.

Professor Montagnier, speaking at a news conference in
London, warned that HIV-2-infected blood samples may not
be detectable through existing screening methods, and urged
that a way of diagnosing the infection be found quickly.

No cases have yet been recorded in Britain, but he said it was
possible that the new infection could be brought to the UK
by, for example, holidaymakers.

It was possible that research on HIV-2 could hasten the
development of a vaccine.  Chimpanzees, an endangered
species, were the only animals suitable for testing the
toxicity of an HIV-1 vaccine.  But a more plentiful species of
monkey could be found and used for HIV-2 tests, thus
providing another route towards a common vaccine.

He said that the Aids virus probably originated in some
species of African monkey, which may now be extinct.

"We suggest that these viruses existed long before the
current Aids epidemics.  A common ancestor probably
existed a long time ago in a human population in west and
central Africa."

They could have originated 100 or more years ago, but
remained undetected until recently because of poor medical
facilities in Africa, its lengthy incubation period, and
confusion with other diseases.

The emergence of the Aids epidemics in Africa was probably
the result of demographic changes, and he warned that the
evolutionary potential of the viruses was striking.  "We must
ask whether other HIVs can emerge as long as a favourable
epidemiological situation is provided."

The full impact of the Aids viruses may not become known
until after half or two thirds of the lifespan of an infected
person has elapsed, an American researcher says in Nature
today.

Dr Cecil Fox, of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda,
Maryland, said: "Manifestations of the disease could continue
to appear in survivors for 20 to 40 years after infection".
@
2.6
One of the world's most eminent Aids researchers yesterday
publicly questioned the established scientific view on the
true cause of the disease.  Professor Luc Montaigner, of the
Pasteur Institute in Paris, indicated that it was possible that
without other infections such as bacteria, HIV, the virus
believed to trigger the disease, may be harmless to infected
people.

His views are to be presented in a Channel 4 programme,
Dispatches, next Wednesday.  Last night the Department of
Health attacked the "sensational and unbalanced tone" of
Channel 4's information about the film.  "It would be tragic if
it undermined the public education and other initiatives
which have already begun to reduce the spread of HIV
infection in the United Kingdom," the department said.

The scientist, one of the co-discoverers of HIV (human
immunodeficiency virus), said: "At first we thought we had
the best candidate to be the cause of Aids."  He said that his
opinion had changed and he believed that "HIV by itself or
some strains of HIV are not sufficient to induce Aids.
Perhaps in order to have the disease we need more than one
agent, a second infection, to have the destruction of the cells
we see in Aids patients."

His doubts that HIV is the complete picture on the cause of
Aids will be echoed by other scientists, some of whom go
close to dismissing the importance of the HIV virus.
Professor Peter Duesberg, an American molecular biologist
who made the first "genetic map" used to understand HIV,
argues that Aids is far from a new disease but rather a
collection or syndrome of more than 25 conventional
diseases.  He claims that the real cause of Aids may be drug
abuse and malnutrition.

Yesterday, Mr Jad Adams, author of Aids: The HIV Myth,
published last year, said the views of these researchers
highlighted a growing private doubt among others.  "A
number of scientists have not accepted HIV as the cause and
have been steadily criticizing the theory."

Mr Adams claims the established literature is littered with
the unsung doubts of these researchers and says that in the
flurry of enthusiasm to establish the discovery within
national boundaries and patent the testing kit, the question
of proving that it actually caused the syndrome was
neglected.

Dr Michael Browing, of the Department of Veterinary
Pathology, at Glasgow University, a leading British centre for
Aids, dismissed suggestions that HIV was irrelevant to the
cause of Aids.  "There is still a lot we do not know, but I am
convinced that HIV is at the least partially responsible for
the disease."

Researchers were assessing links between the rapid onset of
Aids seen in some patients and bacterial or other infections.
Some experts believed that a virus type called Cytomegalo
might play an important role.  The infection lies dormant,
only inflicting damage normally in transplant patients who
have to take immuno-suppressant drugs.

The number of reported cases of people developing Aids in
the United Kingdom rose to 3,157 at the end of the first
quarter of this year with Department of Health figures
showing that 1,773 had died.  The number of people infected
with HIV in January was 11,676 but the true figure is
believed to be much higher.

World Health Organization (WHO) estimates put the total
number of Aids cases at 222,740 but flawed reporting means
the figure is liable to be much higher.

Dr Jonathan Mann, who leaves this month as head of the
WHO Aids programme following disagreements on strategy,
believes the level of HIV infection could be running at up to
ten million.