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3. AIDS: In the Footsteps of a Major Scientific Scandal (1/2)

The first part of this diptych traces the dramatic beginnings of the AIDS epidemic, a global health upheaval that started in 1981 with the publication of the first report on a still-unknown disease. As researchers race to identify its cause, tensions erupt among scientists, marking the start of a long battle for the authorship of this discovery.

In the early 1980s, a previously unknown disease emerged, signaling an unprecedented upheaval in the history of global public health. It all began on June 5, 1981, with the publication in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of an article titled Pneumocystis Pneumonia—Los Angeles. This report described a rare pulmonary infection, generally benign in healthy adults, affecting five gay men in Los Angeles.

Between October 1980 and May 1981, these patients were admitted to three city hospitals, presenting various opportunistic infections. One had survived Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer to which HIV-positive individuals are particularly vulnerable. Two of the patients had died by the time of publication, and the other three would succumb shortly thereafter. The authors of the report suggested a possible cellular immune deficiency, but the exact link between these infections and immune failure remained uncertain.

While rare opportunistic infections had already been observed in some gay men in US coastal cities, this publication marked the first official recognition of a disease that would later be identified as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). It also signified (and especially) the beginning of institutional awareness of an epidemic that would redefine health and social issues for the following decades.

Political inaction

In the following months, the disease spread rapidly, particularly affecting marginalized populations, including homosexual individuals, drug addicts, and hemophiliacs. By December 1981, 337 cases of severe immune deficiency were recorded. The CDC estimated, however, that around 42,000 people were unknowingly HIV-positive at the time. Political inaction and social stigmatization only exacerbated the crisis. As the disease progressed and spread to other societies, it became clear that an unknown infectious agent was responsible for the epidemic. Aware of the urgent public health threat, researchers embarked on a frantic race to identify the cause and develop strategies to contain or at least limit its spread. Two teams stood out in this quest: one led by the French scientist Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and the other by the American Robert Gallo at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the NIH in Bethesda, Washington.

First major step

“After my PhD at King’s College London, I joined the Pasteur Institute as a postdoctoral researcher in Luc Montagnier’s unit,” recalls Ara Hovanessian, a former Lebanese-French research director at the CNRS in France, in an exclusive interview with This is Beirut. “Professor Montagnier was an exceptional researcher in virology and cell biology. With my background in biochemistry, I joined his team to provide the necessary skills and techniques to advance our research. I quickly became his right-hand man.” In 1982, Montagnier conducted research on lymph node samples taken from patients presenting lymphadenopathy, a common symptom of AIDS characterized by abnormal swelling of the lymph nodes.

A few months later, Montagnier succeeded in isolating a virus from these samples, making a major breakthrough in understanding the disease. In the May 20, 1983 issue of Science, the French team published an article identifying a retrovirus, which they named LAV (Lymphadenopathy-Associated Virus), as the cause of AIDS. "Contrary to what is often reported in the media, Montagnier was the only one who orchestrated all of these efforts within his unit, including the analysis of the viral envelope glycoproteins and observing the virus under the electron microscope. Without him, this discovery would not have led to the sequencing of the viral RNA,” explains Professor Hovanessian, suggesting that some individuals were given undue prominence despite limited contributions, for reasons not strictly scientific.

The start of the conflict

In the United States, Robert Gallo learned of the virus isolated in Paris following the publication of the Pasteur Institute’s results. "Gallo contacted Montagnier and requested a sample of the virus to compare it with those they had isolated from patients infected with AIDS. In keeping with scientific ethics, Montagnier agreed to his request, as the article had already been published," explains the Lebanese-French researcher. Less than a year later, in May 1984, Gallo and his team published an article in Science, announcing they had isolated a similar virus associated with AIDS, naming it HTLV-III (Human T-Lymphotropic Virus Type III).

“It’s important to note that in 1983, the Pasteur Institute had deposited a patent application in Europe for the diagnosis of HIV (then known as LAV, according to the nomenclature of the Pasteur Institute), which was quickly approved, while its approval in the United States was delayed,” notes Professor Hovanessian. Interestingly, in 1984, the American NCI group filed a patent application for the diagnosis of HIV (then known as HTLV-III, according to the nomenclature of NCI), which was immediately accepted. Intriguingly, the French patent application was only approved in the US after that date.

Tensions started to escalate...