French AIDS Researchers Split Nobel With German

Key Role Played by Excluded American

Two French researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize yesterday for discovering the AIDS virus, bypassing an American researcher now at the University of Maryland who played a key role in the historic feat.

Luc Montagnier and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their 1983 identification of what was later named the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The pair split the $1.4 million prize with Harald zur Hausen of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, who discovered that another virus, the human papillomavirus (HPV), causes cervical cancer.

Excluded from the prize was Robert C. Gallo, who for years was locked in a bitter dispute with Montagnier over credit for the discovery of HIV, based on work he did at the National Cancer Institute.

Montagnier and Gallo battled in the 1980s over who was the first to do the crucial work that led to identification of the virus, at a time when debate raged over what was causing the devastating disease. Beyond who should get the credit, millions of dollars were at stake from fees for blood tests.

President Ronald Reagan and French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac eventually signed an agreement in 1987 that divided the royalties equally, and Gallo and Montagnier in 2003 published a paper together in the New England Journal of Medicine acknowledging each other's work.

It is the first time a Nobel Prize has been awarded for research related to AIDS, a pandemic that has killed more than 25 million people worldwide since it was first recognized in 1981. An additional 33 million are currently living with HIV.

The prize's rules limit the number of scientists who can share the award to three. Hans Jornvall, secretary of the committee that decided the award at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, made it clear that the panel felt that Montagnier and Barré-Sinoussi deserved sole credit because in 1983 they published the first papers identifying the virus, in the journal Science.

"We think the two that we named are the discoverers of the virus," Jornvall said in a telephone interview. "If you look at the initial papers on the publication of the discovery, you will find those who discovered it. "

Jornvall praised Gallo's work but said the committee based its decision on the fact that the French researchers published their work first.

"Dr. Gallo is an excellent person and has meant very much for science, but there are many people who are excellent and do very much for science," Jornvall said. "We named the three people we consider to be the discoverers of the viruses we named."

Other researchers said that Montagnier, now at the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, and Barré-Sinoussi, of the Pasteur Institute, both in Paris, clearly deserved the prize but that it was disappointing that Gallo was left out.

"Gallo deserves enormous credit," said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "It's a shame you can't give it to four people, because Gallo's contributions were enormous."