# Robert Gallo

Robert Charles Gallo (born March 23, 1937) is a U.S. biomedical researcher. He is best known for his role in identifying the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) as the infectious agent responsible for the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) although his role and this discovery remains controversial.

## Quotes

* It is time now to introduce my friend Peter Duesberg. Where do I begin? At NIH, Peter is sometimes known as the battling bulldog. He gets his teeth into something and 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years later those teeth are still sunk in it...[...]...He began working with retroviruses . Peter the biochemist. This really led to the first molecular and genetically defined transforming gene, the Src gene. A great deal of this brilliant and original, the real critical aspects, was and Blood Transfusion vol.29 p. 1, 1985.
** On Peter Duesberg

## Quotes about

* Dr. Mikovits joined NIH in 1980 as a Postdoctoral Scholar in Molecular Virology at the National Cancer Institute and began a 20-year collaboration with Frank Ruscetti, a pioneer in the field of human retro virology. She helped Dr Russetti isolate the HIV virus and link it to #AIDS in 1983. Her NIH boss Anthony Fauci delayed publication of that critical paper for 6 months to let his protégé Robert Gallo replicate, publish and claim credit. The delay in mass HIV testing let AIDS further spread around the globe and helped Fauci win promotion to director NIAID.
** Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in The Truth About Fauci—Featuring Dr. Judy Mikovits,Children's Health Defense (20 April 2020)
** Note: In 2007, Mikovits met a co-discoverer of xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV), Robert Silverman, at a conference. Silverman had found XMRV sequences, which are highly similar to mouse genomic sequences, in prostate cancer specimens several years earlier. Using tools obtained from Silverman, Mikovits began to look for XMRV in her CFS samples. In late 2008, a graduate student, who subsequently was hired as her technician, obtained two positive results from a group of twenty samples. He and Mikovits successively altered the experimental conditions until all samples gave a positive signal. In 2009, Mikovits and co-workers reported in the journal Science that they had detected XMRV DNA in CFS patients and control subjects. Negative results were published soon after, disputing Mikovits's findings. Two of the original authors of this paper subsequently reanalyzed the samples used in the research and found that the samples were contaminated with XMRV plasmid DNA, leading them to publish a partial retraction of their original results. In December 2011, after a request by first author Robert Silverman, the editors of Science retracted the paper in its entirety. On September 29, 2011, Mikovits was terminated by the WPI due to disputes over the control of lab samples and the integrity of her work; she subsequently came under investigation for alleged manipulation of data in her publications related to XMRV. (See Judy Mikovits#XMRV and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue)
* When Frank Ruscetti was out of town, I received a call from Dr. Fauci and he demanded that I give him our manuscript on the isolation and confirmation of HIV, while it was still in press. I refused to do that because it’s unethical. These manuscripts are confidential and only authors can give him a copy... He threatened to fire me for insubordination but still I refused. It’s unethical... When Frank Ruscetti returned a few weeks later, he gave the manuscript to Dr. Fauci, and Dr. Fauci purposely delayed the publication of our manuscript in order that his crony, Dr. Robert Gallo, could copy our work and submit a competing manuscript and get it into press before ours. On May 4, 1984, Dr. Robert Gallo famously published a series of papers demonstrating that a retrovirus he’d isolated was the cause of AIDS.
** Judy Mikovits quoted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in The Truth About Fauci—Featuring Dr. Judy Mikovits,Children's Health Defense (20 April 2020)
* Appropriating her (Judy Mikovits') work wasn’t the worst of it. This delayed the development of testing and spread the HIV epidemic through the world, killing millions.
** Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in The Truth About Fauci—Featuring Dr. Judy Mikovits,Children's Health Defense (20 April 2020)