Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1986. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The New York Times - December 10, 1986
Erik Eckholm
The panel of three medical experts, reporting on behalf of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, released its conclusions in Atlanta and Washington.
The investigation was requested by Senator Lowell P. Weicker Jr., Republican of Connecticut, and by Dr. James O. Mason, director of the centers, after news articles last summer reported charges of former C.D.C. employees and collaborators that AIDS research was marred by mismanagement, suppression of results and sabotage of experiments.
Senior officials of the centers have acknowledged that personal conflicts disrupted one of several laboratories involved in studies of acquired immune deficiency syndrome but called the other charges unfounded and the overall AIDS program sound. The report yesterday, while generally supporting that view, also urged correction of management flaws it said had made the AIDS Program Laboratory only "moderately productive." #31 People Interviewed The laboratory in question employs 27 of the 192 professionals who work full time at the centers in Atlanta on different facets of AIDS. In addition to research in several laboratories, the centers direct the nation's studies of the spread and control of AIDS and supports preventive programs.
According to the panel, which interviewed 31 current and former C.D.C. staff members in its investigation, a "lack of strong scientific leadership and clear research goals" caused "internal competition" rather than a "team spirit" in the laboratory under dispute.
The panel recommended that AIDS virus research in the program be reorganized, with basic and applied research placed under separate managers. It noted that the centers had already begun making similar changes.
Dr. Mason said yesterday that the centers, in an internal review, had also concluded that the AIDS Program Laboratory suffered a morale problem and that steps to correct it had been taken.
'Dissatisfaction and Distrust'
Regarding the charge that experiments in the AIDS laboratory and the herpes virus laboratory had been maliciously tampered with over the last two years, the panel said it "cannot rule out purposeful minor tampering" with some experiments, possibly linked to "dissatisfaction and distrust" between individuals.
Such incidents did not appear to be directed specifically at AIDS research, the panel concluded, and they had "not been an impediment to experimental work."
The only allegation of data suppression, according to the report, concerned experiments in 1984 and 1985 in which a chemical in many spermicides was found to kill the AIDS virus in labaoratory conditions. An outside collaborator charged that C.D.C. officials had unnecessarily delayed publication of results, which took nearly a year.
The investigating committee was headed by Dr. Julius R. Krevans, chancellor of the University of California at San Francisco. The other members were Dr. Robert W. Berliner of the Yale University School of Medicine and Dr. Bernadine Healy of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.
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