However, by 1980, two research groups, one from the National Cancer Institute, and the other from the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center had shown that "the antibodies in question are elicited as a result of exposure to many natural substances possessing widely cross-reacting antigens and are not a result of widespread infection of man with replication competent oncoviruses."

In 1981 Gallo accepted that the antibodies were not HL23V antibodies.

This finding had such a profound significance in regard to the existence of HL23V, that today nobody, not even Gallo, claims that HL23V ever existed.

Thus, before the AIDS era ample evidence existed revealing it is impossible to prove the existence of or infection with a retrovirus by an antibody test. The question then is: how is it possible that millions of people around the world have been told that they are infected with HIV on the basis of an antibody test?