Scientists rarely are the heads of agencies, political appointments rarely go to
scientists. Scientists are perhaps less likely to be dishonest, but are subject to
the same pressures as everyone else. In my lectures this week I am talking about
what happens when science "goes wrong". They are under the same political, social,
economic pressures as everyone else.
http://users.megapathdsl.net/~solo/a...d_science.html
perhaps no incident points this out better than the search for the cause of AIDS. I
show my students the movie "... and the band played on" but there are two books, one
is the same title as the movie and the other is "Science fictions". Robert Gallo not
only contributed nothing to the search for the cause of AIDS, but he may have well
set research back by at least a year ... leading to the death of thousands of people.

Case in point: the French came up with a blood test 99.9% accurate in detecting
those with the virus. Gallo came up with a blood test that was something like 90.9%
accurate in detecting those with the virus, letting 10% of blood from infected people
continue to contaminate the blood supply.
1. The French had the European patent and then applied for a US patent on their
blood test 1 YEAR before Gallo, guess who got the patent? Gallo. The patent office
is a government agency... above politics?
2. The blood centers and everyone else in the US were BARRED from using the French
test.. never mind all the false negatives, AND, all the false positives too. So our
blood supply continued to be contaminated with HIV. Who barred the use of the better
French test? The gov'ment. Who has continually maintained the myth that Gallo
discovered the virus that causes HIV, who continues to let Gallo off the hook, covers
up for him.... many scientists in the US. Whether they WANT to do that, they do it
to cover their own asses out of political, social and economic concerns.
Just so my perspective is understood. I am a viral immunologist and was studying
persistent viruses at the time the first reports of an unusual disease in gay men
came out so I followed every detail. I have been on a board overseeing clinical
trials of experimental drugs for treating HIV/AIDS for 8 years. I am a scientist.
Ingrid

"Frank Logullo" wrote:
I'm not familiar with rBGH but it has been my experience that unlike
politicians government scientists are honest people.
I would add Nader to the politicians list
Frank




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