What did Gallo actually do to prove he had isolated a new retrovirus from AIDS patients?
EPE: If you read the first paper, what was called isolation consisted of (1) observation of reverse transcription in those stimulated cultures, and (2) electron microscopic photographs of a few particles in those stimulated cultures, but not in gradient bands or fresh plasma; and (3) observation that blood from a hemophilia patient — as well as from rabbits that had injected into them the material from those cultures which banded at 1.16 — contained antibodies that reacted with some of the proteins from those bands. CJ: That was reported as isolation of a virus? EPE: Yes, but this is not isolation. And, since this is the best evidence for HIV’s existence, scientists must question the existence of HIV for exactly the same reason scientists at the Sloan Kettering and National Cancer Institute questioned the existence of HL23V. CJ: Tell me about the reverse transcriptase observations. Why don’t they prove the presence of a retrovirus? EPE: Reverse transcriptase was discovered in retrovi
