Did Scientists Hijack Aids Virus?

Ocean County Observer

September 1, 1986

The prevalence and frightening potential for devastation inherent in AIDS mobilized international forces of science to search for a cause and a cure.

Awhile back, the French in the Pasteur Institute believed that they had found the causative virus, a retro virus they named LAV. Shortly thereafter, or perhaps simultaneously (we’ll find out from the court records) scientists at the National Institutes of Health published a paper indicating that the HTLV-3 virus, not LAV caused the dread disease.

HTLV stand for Human T-Cell Leukemia Virus. I don’t know what LAV stands for. Both are retroviruses. They are called retroviruses because the genetic chain of RNA that transcribes the message from DNA to the amino acids, forging them into proteins, is reversed, the RNA actually transcribes the message to DNA. The process is called reverse trans-scriptase. Although it was denied at first, LAV and HGLV-3 turned out to be identical.

Of course, as in everything else that people fight over, there is money in AIDS. Those that own the virus also own the tests that determine whether or not a person has AIDS. The test was developed only because the virus was known. Because of the availability of the virus it could be used top test for antibodies against AIDS that might b e [present in the blood of victims or those incubating the disease. The virus therefore is a source of great revenue.

Ancillary news is that we are attempting to introduce into the genetic chain of the vaccinia virus (the one used to protect against smallpox, the famous vaccination) a genetic complex of the AIDS virus so that this relatively safe vaccine could then be used to vaccinate against AIDS. That would of course bring manifold more dollars into the coffers of those that own the virus.

As a result, the Pasteur Institute has instituted a lawsuit demanding recognition of its primary role in discovering the virus as well as a share n the profits, which now go to the federal government of the United States.

It promises to be quite a donnybrook. Particularly since the French did send over samples of the virus before we announced our discovery of HTLV-3; and the American scientists who published their findings of HTLV-3 in Science (Nay 4, 1984) included a photograph of the French LAV virus. (By mistake, they say).

The Americans are nonplussed and have no idea how the wrong picture got into their publication. But it does seem to prove that they did have the French LAV virus and did do work on it. The government had previously denied that we worked on the French virus.

The “error” was discovered after pretrial examination of American scientists.

So the [possibility exists that the French have caught us with our genes down.