GALLO’S HUMOR

By Steven James

May 1999

Laughter is the best medicine... or so people say. But, comedy sometimes has a dark side and loses its therapeutic value, like when the joke’s on you. It’s funny -- and you may laugh -- but during the laughter you may wonder why is this funny? Why am I laughing? Like when Cindy Adams, the syndicated columnist, says “Only in New York, Kids, Only in New York!”

A certain kind of ironic or dark humor is what is called “Gallows Humor,” named after the medieval frame device consisting of two upright posts and a crossbeam from which criminals were hanged. Gallows humor makes fun of a very serious or terrifying situation. Like the death row inmate eating his last meal the night before execution and, unable to finish it, his guard asks: “Hey, man, want a doggie bag?”

The creativity of our species seemingly knows no bounds, and one of our fellow homo sapiens has managed to take this dark humor to an entirely new level, no small feat especially for someone who has never earned a living entertaining others. For that matter, Robert C. Gallo hasn’t really worked very hard all his adult life.

Not since he entered government service over thirty years ago as a research scientist in the then sleepy world of biotechnology. You don’t really work up a sweat in the bureaucratic world of government science. The pay’s good, the benefit’s legendary, and if you decide to “play politics” along the way, well, life can be downright enjoyable.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Gallo must have chuckled quite a lot. You see, our government had him and his colleagues spending our tax dollars looking for something which they all knew did not exist... the “virus” which causes cancer. They called it the “War on Cancer” and spent billions of our tax dollars trying to find the cause of the alarming increase in cancer in the U.S.; or rather, trying to mislead the American people into thinking that the cause of cancer could be found in a test tube, and that a “magic bullet” cure could be found to eliminate this scourge from contemporary society.

Of course, the reasons for the rise in cancer were evident to the “conogscienti” like Bob Gallo. Let’s face it, post World War II industrialization had produced environmental toxicity beyond belief. Smog chocked our cities, our rivers became open sewers, and chemical pesticides like DDT even threatened our nation’s proud symbol... the American Eagle... with extinction.

Meanwhile, the meat and dairy lobbies bought congressmen for “peanuts.” The bureaucrats we entrusted to “watch the store” turned out to be foxes in chicken feathers, and Americans were lied to about good health and good diet.

With no one to object, Madison Avenue did what Madison Avenue does best. It sold us a high fat, sugar, and salt diet [unknowingly laden with toxic chemicals, colorings, and additives] which in the toxic environment being produced by the competition-free hey-day of the 50s and 60s in America, created a nation of obesity and the malaise of cancer.

It has taken almost a half century to begin to correct this national disgrace; this plague upon our nation. I don’t know about you, but I rarely, if ever, see cancer patients laughing. Perhaps they just don’t “get it.” They just take their chemotherapy as “cure” and bravely manage to smile a little.

But, Bob Gallo got it. He got grants, prestige, laboratories, and an unlimited number of animals to experiment on... all the perks that anyone in his position could possibly wish for. It had to be amusing, because he was actually getting paid for this!

But, it wasn’t the big prize... the really big reward of prestige [no Nobel Prize, for example] or super wealth [no IPO with Bob Gallo as CEO]... at least not then. It can take years, after all, to perfect a comedy routine.

Not that he hadn’t tried. Because Bob Gallo would stoop at nothing to achieve his goals. And, what if he had to “bend the rules” or “massage the numbers” just a little to get there? No problem. His career is checkered with fraud, ineptitude, and misappropriation. Anything goes in Bob’s World of Comedy... anything for a laugh!

By the end of the 1970s, the “War on Cancer” was lost because after twenty years, somebody realized that you can’t “catch” cancer. No virus as villain. But the stage was being set for a bigger, better, “new” epidemic caused by a new “virus” which would provide years of entertainment for the nation... courtesy of Bob Gallo.

Bob Gallo was ready for the limelight, and for more mirth. His most audacious deceit and his biggest lie came on April 23, 1984, when Bob Gallo declared, with a straight face and with his Reagan appointed side kick [cabinet member Margaret Heckler, Secretary of Health and Human Services], that he had discovered the virus which causes the supposedly deadly “AIDS.” This was science by press conference... no peer review, nothing proved... just Bob Gallo center stage with the whole world watching! The “War on Cancer” became the “War on Aids.” Bob Gallo as stand-up comedian was on a roll!

Today, fifteen years later, Gallo is a happy man... and he laughs a lot... all the way to the bank. We’ve all got to eat... but Gallo’s Humor provides a feast!

Not that anybody else is laughing. But, to a psychopath like Bob Gallo, the echoes of his own laughter in the scrambled eggs he calls a brain make up for the “roar of the grease paint, the smell of the crowd.” Bob’s got his own personal “borscht belt” between his two floppy ears.

You see, Bob Gallo is the man who unleashed the terror of the millennium upon all the rest of us. He couldn’t have discovered the virus which causes “AIDS” -- quite simply -- because Bob stole the sample which was used to support his hypothesis. Then, after his press conference, Bob published four papers in the peer review journal Science which his peers later discovered to have been “doctored,” bent to prove what he wanted to prove. His boss, the National Institutes of Health, saved him from disgrace, humiliation and expulsion several years later by only finding him guilty of “creating and fostering conditions that gave rise to falsified/fabricated data and falsified reports.” If I “roll” my eyes at you, Bob, I bet I can make you laugh!

When Bob lied about HIV causing “AIDS,” he created a second lie... namely that the HIV test [which he patented and which became a phenomenal source of personal income] was an accurate indication of “infection” by HIV [which it is not], and that the discovery of antibodies [being ‘HIV positive’] meant you were contagious for “AIDS” [which is also not true]. Bob forgot to tell the world that his test commonly produced “false positive” test results caused by drug abuse, vaccinations, pregnancy and numerous other conditions and not necessarily HIV. Only Bob’s inner circle [the “Bob Club”] were in on the joke!

This test, which has condemned millions of people to a life of fear, suicide, and death, continues to this day to provide Gallo with millions of dollars of ill-gotten gains. Is that a little smile I see on your face, Bob?

But, those limo rides to the bank from his Maryland-based company which currently manufactures the HIV home test kits [and which also receives all sorts of tax payer supplied grants just for the asking], are filled with laughter. Just imagine how many people suffered and died to make this deposit, huh, Bobby? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha... .

But, wait, since every great performance deserves an encore, the next year-- 1985--Gallo and his small band of criminally insane comedians got an even better idea to increase their amusement and happiness, “Gallo’s Humor” in full swing, as it were. Laughter, indeed, was about to become the very best “medicine.” After all, comedy is King!

Based upon Bob’s two previous lies that HIV causes “AIDS” and that the HIV test is an indication of a condition preliminary to “full-blown AIDS,” Bob and his comedy troop came up with AZT as a medicine for people who had fallen for their comical deception. Of course, nobody but they knew that AZT is the most lethal chemotherapy ever invented by American science [in 1964 for cancer] --guaranteed to kill human beings quickly with high dosages... and more slowly at lower dosages. Only they didn’t call it chemotherapy... they called it “anti-retroviral” therapy. Keep ‘em guessing, Bob, that’s part of the FUN!!!

And, who might be the “butt” of their “comedia?” Why, gay men, of course. Why, everybody knows that gay men just love a good time... why else would they call themselves “gay?” And, they just love to laugh! And, they are so trendy... they would be the first to experience “Gallo’s Humor”... they even stood in line waiting for the opportunity to pay $10,000 per year for Bob’s drug with the pathetic desperation of the “terminally” ill. Bob Gallo was on a another roll!

So, in 1985, gay men--acting upon the recommendation of their Gallo influenced doctors--began taking lethal chemotherapy [oops! that’s “anti-retroviral” therapy]--Bob’s deadly AZT--and began to experience “Gallo’s Humor” first hand. They were the first to “get” the joke, but they missed the “punch line.”

But, lest they be the only ones to enjoy Gallo’s Humor, the joke quickly spread to non-gays... women and children, black and white... anyone unfortunate to fall for the HIV diagnosis as “one-liner” [“hiv, the virus that causes AIDS,” a mantra we all know so well courtesy of Lawrence Altman, medical editor of the New York Times and former Centers for Disease Control infectious disease agent--and “Bob Club” member]. With AZT now killing off the gay population, the nation believed that the “AIDS” epidemic was real--that all Americans were at risk--and Bob Gallo leads the charge for the “War on AIDS”. ...“Safe Sex” or “No Sex”... criminal penalties for “spreading” “AIDS”... mandatory HIV partner notification... what a riot!

We all remember the hilarity in Hollywood watching Rock Hudson suffer and die! And, what about all those laughs when Halston succumbed to AZT poisoning! Seventh Avenue was in “stitches”! And, how about Arthur Ashe. Poor thing, trembling so at the end! He forgot all about his “tennis elbow!” Or, how about Broadway’s Michael Bennett, off to that great “Chorus Line In The Sky!” Why I can hardly keep a “straight” face! Oh, stop it Bob... I’m laughing so hard I could cry!!!

Or the movie Philadelphia... brave Tom Hanks acting like Don Quixote tilting at the “Gallo’s Humor” windmill! Or the always fabulous Liz Taylor [wearing her diamond studded “Aids Ribbon”], raising all that money to care for the sick and dying... all because of Bob [Bob, you are too much!!!].

Or the “AIDS Quilt,” spread out in our nation’s capitol with sobbing lovers and friends and family, actually thinking that their dear ones died of “AIDS” when in reality it was just “Gallo’s Humor!” Oh, if only they knew the joke! Really, Bob, what’s the punch line... punch line... punch line???

I remember a carpenter. In his day, they didn’t make gallows. Took too much wood, and death came too quickly. They just used two pieces of wood and made a cross. Then, instead of hanging from the unnecessary cross piece, the victim’s hands were nailed arms extended, and his feet nailed to the upright piece. Death came agonizingly slowly... but much more quickly than death by AZT, which usually takes around 8 or 9 months at the high dosages originally prescribed. Today, with the less toxic chemotherapy protease inhibitor drugs--the AZT diluted “cocktail”--the patients can linger on for years while being slowly and agonizingly poisoned to death. More time to consider their “sins” and point fingers of “blame”.

Then, too, there were sick jokes and laughter--a crown of thorns for a “king” --and the kind of behavior we are beginning to see as the Jesse Venturas become governors of states, and “extreme” boxing declares the winner to be the one who walks out of the cage, or when two kids in trench coats blow away their fellow students and teachers with no logical explanations.

But, that was way before we became literate as a society, before we were able to rapidly communicate globally, before we matured to the people we are today! THAT WAS WAY BEFORE BOB AND “GALLO’S HUMOR!”

Someday soon Bob, when the laughter dies, and the crowd settles down, people may begin to “get it”. When the echoes finally din, and the reality sets in. When “Gallo’s Humor” replaces “gallows humor” in Webster’s Dictionary.

This time, Bob, you really did it. You never really needed a Nobel Prize. You got your IPO. You struck CEO GOLD, BABY! You left ‘em “dead in the aisles!”

This time, Bob, you’ll finally get what you really deserve after entertaining us with your sick brand of humor for these fifteen long years of mayhem.

But, remember Bob, he who laughs last... laughs best. “Hey, Bob, want a ‘doggie bag’, Bob???” Just kidding, Bob! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha...

Steven James is a Vietnam Veteran and Dissident “AIDS” Activist in New York City. Contact: sjames7@ix.netcom.com