The New York Times - April 26, 1984

Some kind of progress is surely being made. The commotion indicates a fierce - and premature - fight for credit between scientists and bureaucratic sponsors of research. Certainly no one deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

Last Saturday the head of the Federal Centers for Disease Control, Dr. James Mason, said he considered a virus discovered in France, and called LAV, to be the villain. "I believe we have the cause of AIDS, and it is an exciting discovery," he told our colleague Lawrence Altman. But then on Monday Dr. Mason's boss, Secretary Margaret Heckler of the Health and Human Services Department, declared the cause of AIDS to be a virus named HTLV- 3 by a team under Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute. "Today we add another miracle to the long honor roll of American medicine and science," Mrs. Heckler declared.

What's going on? Since even certain discovery of the guilty virus will not produce a vaccine for at least two years, and even better blood screenings cannot occur for months, what you are hearing is not yet a public benefit but a private competition - for fame, prizes, new research funds.

In the world of science, as among primitive societies, to be the namer of an object is to own it. The French and American researchers have different names for their virus even though, as Mrs. Heckler conceded, "We believe it will prove to be the same." If so, and since most credit traditionally goes to whoever publishes first, the French will claim prime credit for finding the virus while the American team will get credit for doing the substantial extra work needed to develop diagnostic tests. A more mature allocation of credit, if LAV/ HTLV-3 is indeed the solution, would focus less on individual claimants and more on the interdependent scientific network of which they are a part. That network includes scientists in Paris and Cambridge, Mass., as well as at the National Institutes of Health, the Cancer Institute's parent. An important role has been played by the Centers for Disease Control, which, despite constraints on its funds, began to study AIDS the moment the disease was discovered in 1981. Its richer sister agency, the National Institutes of Health, was much slower to make AIDS a priority. That brought the Administration fierce criticism from homosexuals, the principal group at risk from AIDS. The rival claims and competition among researchers serve a public interest as long as the necessary cooperation and sharing of materials and information is not inhibited. Mrs. Heckler's announcement, however, promised too much too soon. The discovery is not yet "the triumph of science over a dread disease," as she put it, or even a proven cause of AIDS. It is only the nomination of a prime suspect. When a real triumph has been certified will be the time to look for the true pattern of credit.

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