LETTER TO SCIENCE

Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos (1) Valendar F.Turner (2) John M. Papadimitriou (3) David Causer (1) Bruce Hedland-Thomas (1) Barry Page (1)

In the 19th June issue of Science, page 1856, Michael Balter, repeating a prevailing view, states: "Rozenbaum, Leibowitch, Mayaud soon joined forces with other researchers, including virologists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, to form the team that first isolated HIV, the virus that causes the disease", AIDS. On page 1862 he wrote: "The Pasteur Institute in Paris harbors a number of AIDS stars. Francoise Barré -Sinoussi, who first isolated HIV in 1983, has spent recent years accumulating mountains of data on African strains of the virus". The senior, most quoted author of the 1983 Barré -Sinoussi et al paper (1) entitled: "Isolation of a T-Lymphotropic Retrovirus from a Patient at Risk for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)" is the virologist Luc Montagnier.

To isolate HIV, the authors used the long accepted method for retroviral isolation, that is, banding, (ultracentrifugation) in density gradients. They claimed to have shown that the density of 1.16g/ml, the sucrose density at which retroviral particles band, contained "purified, labelled virus", that is, the 1.16g/ml band contained nothing else but retrovirus particles isolated from everything else.

In an interview published this year, (2) which Montagnier gave to the French journalist Djamel Tahi, Montagnier was asked why they did not publish electron micrographs proving that the 1.16g/ml band contained isolated HIV particles. Montagnier answered: No such proof was published, because, even after "Roman effort", at the density of 1.16g/ml they could see no particles with "morphology typical of retroviruses". He gave similar answers to repeated questions, including "I repeat, we did not purify", that is, isolate HIV.

Given the important and highly significant differences in the consequences of these contradictory claims, it is a matter of urgency for the other 11 authors of the 1983 study, and especially Barré -Sinoussi and her co-workers from the Pasteur Institute, to either confirm or refute Montagnier's statements.

(1) Department of Medical Physics, (2) Department of Emergency Medicine, Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, Western Australia; (3) Department of Pathology, University of Western Australia. Voice int + 618 92243221 Fax int + 618 92243511 Email vturner@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

REFERENCES

1. F. Barré-Sinoussi, et al., Science 220, 868-71 (1983).

2. D. Tahi, Continuum 5, 30-34 (1998).