Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Examiner - December 26, 2006
Karl B. Hille, khille@baltimoreexaminer.com
As one of the world's foremost thinkers in the field of AIDS/HIV research, Gallo has organized an annual retreat drawing infectious disease researchers worldwide to Baltimore City for 10 years to share information and strategies on fighting some of the world's nastiest viruses.
"It's a science meeting with the feel of a family reunion," Gallo said. "There's a core of people who always come back, including the Europeans, Israelis and NIH people."
The meetings began as Gallo's lab retreat with virology scientists, but the word spread. People joined the institute researchers from all over for a chance to share information with the man responsible for identifying the link between HIV and AIDS, discovering the first human retrovirus - the leukemia virus - and developed the first blood test to screen for HIV.
Gallo was the most referenced scientist in the world between 1980 and 1990, according to the institute, and he thinks a vaccine against AIDS could be ready for testing in the next few years.
Earlier this month, the London think tank Gold Mercury International awarded him the 2006 Gold Mercury Health & Science Award.
"Gold Mercury recognizes Dr. Gallo's pioneering influence in the field of virology, including discoveries that have led to both diagnostic and therapeutic advances in cancer and several other viral diseases," the release from Gold Mercury states.
Gallo shared some of his personal background with The Examiner recently.
Raised in an Italian family in Waterbury, Conn., Gallo said his father's side of the family was reserved, but his mother's relatives were traditional Italians: "long dinners, happy, smooching, loving and kissing."
Gallo, who played basketball and football in his youth - when he wasn't swimming in Connecticut's many rivers and lakes, spends most of time now with his work and his family and playing "a little tennis, even with a replacement knee."
"I'm more of a Ravens fan than anything. I actually went to Nashville to see them play."
Of his childhood, Gallo said, "I got whacked many times by the nuns, ... kissed a lot of girls. All the fun was over by the time I was 18."
He was inspired to go into medicine by his uncle, a zoologist, and by the doctors who tried to save his younger sister from leukemia when he was 13. "I met a lot of doctors in the hospital when my sister had leukemia. Also when I broke my back in my senior year of high school.
"My father was a metallurgist. He developed guided missile warheads."
But his father worked a lot. "I went on vacations with my uncle. He was always finding interesting things to point out to us" in the wild.
He enjoys amplified histories that imagine the personalities of famous figures without distorting the facts. He is reading "The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success," and recently finished "The Ancient City: Life in Classical Athens and Rome."
He enjoys independent films and has season opera tickets, though he doesn't have much interest in orchestral music.
Gallo and his wife, Mary Jane, have been married 46 years. They have two sons, Marcus, 44, and Robert, 43, and a daughter Caroline Wong-Staal, 23, all living in the Bethesda area.
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