The virus that causes AIDS was first isolated in Paris. At the Institut Pasteur, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, working in Luc Montagnier's unit with Jean-Claude Chermann, detected a new retrovirus in a lymph node sample from a patient at risk for AIDS. On May 20, 1983, the team reported it in Science, naming it lymphadenopathy-associated virus, or LAV, after the swollen lymph nodes in which it was found. Their wording was cautious: the virus might be involved in several conditions, including AIDS. The paper was met with skepticism, notably from Robert Gallo of the US National Cancer Institute, who had earlier discovered two other human retroviruses, HTLV-I and HTLV-II. In September 1983, Montagnier presented further evidence linking LAV to AIDS to a group of experts that included Gallo.

In the spring of 1984 Gallo's laboratory submitted a series of papers describing a retrovirus it called HTLV-III as the probable cause of AIDS. On April 23, 1984, Margaret Heckler, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services,…