fluctuated (Fig. 2a), culture fluids harvested and assayed at approximately 14-day intervals consistently showed particulate RT activity [RT activity in the material which banded at 1.16 gm/ml] which has been followed for over 5 months... Thus the data show that this permanently growing T-cell population can continuously produce HTLV-III". EM examination of the H4 clone culture showed "the presence of extracellular viral particles". Some of the findings of the Gallo investigation are relevant to the above experiments: 1. The HT cell line was not cultured with concentrated fluids originating from individual AIDS patient T-cell cultures as is implied in the paper but from fluids pooled, first from the individual cultures of 3 patients and ultimately from the individual cultures of 10 patients. The Gallo investigation found this procedure to be "of dubious scientific rigor". One scientist described it as "really crazy".11 2. According to the OSI inquiry, "the statement in the published papers that the samples were "first" shown to be secreting RT, "is contradicted by the evidence of the notebooks that only one of the three [initial cultures] was tested".22 In evidence which Popovic gave to the inquiry he said that he had pooled the supernatant fluids from the ten cultures because none "individually was producing high concentrations of reverse transcriptase". (The levels of RT are not given). However: It is important to note that RT is determined by estimation of the incorporation of [3H] labelled nucleotides into DNA and is reported as counts per minute (cpm), and it is acknowledged that background radioactivity, that is, radioactivity in the absence of infection, can be as high as 0.4 X 104 cpm.(23) The above findings give rise to additional questions: If the first HTLV-III was isolated from HT cell cultures with the pooled supernatants, then how was the "Rabbit antiserum to HTLV-III" obtained for the immunofluoresence studies? How was it...
