POPOVIC.- The AIDS-researcher who became victimized
- got a scientific asylum in Stockholm
By Kwame Ingemar Ljungqvist.
Abstract:
Mikulas ¨Mika¨ Popovic who emigrated from Czechoslovakia in 1980 to go ahead with his work on cancer causing viruses in USA, was soon to be involved in a cruel game about AIDS
A game where even serious
researchers like Popovic, where developed into chess pieces who were moved
by far more stronger forces, and where they were not given enough opportunity
to give their version of what passed in the labs. Due to the mistakes of
his superiors Popovic lost in confidence and suddenly found himself without
a possibility to go ahead as a researcher in USA. He was then offered a
temporary job in Stockholm. It could well be described as a scientific
asylum.
Text.
In the scientific world a time consuming drama has occured since 1983. It is about who was the first to discover HIV, the AIDS virus.
A drama that contains ingrediences like scientific fraud, involvement of two state men: president Reagan of USA and prime minister Chirac from France, lawyers and investigations, million of dollars in patent rights and a unique journalist giant work where the Chicago Tribune writer John Crewdson through a 16 pages special issue and more than 50000 words tried to find out what had really happened in the laboratories.
In this battle there are many victims - not to forget those 10000 AIDS patients who now are dead or dying because blood tests were delayed, giving hemophiliacs and transfusion patients a death sentence together with their blood products.
Also there are researchers who became hurt, although their ambition was to follow the science codes.
This drama could be seen as a game of chess, where one side is the Pasteur Institute - where the queen - the most brilliant chessman - equals Francoise Barré-Sinoussi. The woman who by intelligence and intution was the first to trace HIV from a patient in 1983. The French party is played by Luc Montagnier even equalling the king of the board.
On the American side the former Czech Mikulas Popovic is the queen whereas the king and probably also the player is Robert Gallo.
Gallo proclaimed himself as the discoverer of HIV in April 1984, almost a year after the Pasteur team said the same.
After many moves it turned out that the Gallo proclamation was more than a single bluff. The virus he annonced as his discovery was the same that the Pasteur group sent to him.
In the court game that was to follow Gallo first sent out his queen - his laboratory chief Popovic - in a dangerous position - maybe to be victimized in order to save the self elected king himself.
In the first trial both Gallo and Popovic were defeated, in combination with som peasant victims, for scientific misconduct. When they appealed against , Popovic was send out in the first move. This time he was found unguilty - and the case against Gallo was cancelled.
This happened in November 1993, but already before Popovic had been left out of work for two years, thanks to all tours and writings. Already before he was invited by Swedish colleagues to join them in Stockholm.
Peter Biberfeldt, Swedish AIDS researcher, who helped Popvic to Stockholm: ¨Mika Popovic will finish some of his research here. I don´t think he will make any critical comments. There is no sense to put more wood onto the fire. His intentions are to get a job at NIH and even though he speaks out in Sweden his word may reach US through the Embassy.¨
Popovic doesn´t seem himself that cautious. Instead during the one hour long interview including 86 questions, there is a lot Popovic would like to comment on. The more intriguing the questions are the more open hearted beomes Popovic. Only half of the questions are to be finished.
Mika about himself ¨I was born in Czechoslovakia 1941, during the German occupation. I married 1968 when the Soviet troops marched through my country. After that I am the father of two - and I have always lived monogamously¨, says Mika smiling hinting to the problems with HIV infection.
-¨I first met with Gallo in Uppsala, Sweden, when I worked there 1973-74. I was later invited by him to come to his lab to assist with the cell lines I had developed in Czechoslovakia. I arrived to NCI in Bethesda in january 1980 on a short term contract which was prolonged. Some incidents back in Czechoslovakia contributed to my descision to stay in US and since 1989 I am also an US citizen.¨
Popovic has got a double experience as a scientist - to work within a socialist and a capitalist society - ¨Both alternatives have their plus and minus. In Czechoslovakia research was a pure truth seeking task, but in USA you also have to compete. On the negative side in Czechoslovakia, you needed to have the right contacts with a certain political preponderance, whereas in US the commercial side of science is directing you too much.¨
In July 1989, Popovic intended to start a new project at a monkey research center in New Mexico. Until that time he had been together with Gallo at their laboratory in Bethesda. But the project never came to a starting point and in November 1989 the huge articles from John Crewdson appeared in Chicago Tribune. Articles which would initiate a delicate examination of what happened in their lab in 1983-84. There was no more any calm time for Popovic.
-¨You may excuse me , but I may prejudice Crewdson, and perhaps he is doing the same to me. But you must know one thing. He has never interviewed me directly, he has only gone for second hand material in my case. Sometimes correct, sometimes quotations lifted from their context, sometimes lies. But what disturbs me most is that Crewdson depreciates the bench-work which my colleagues and I made in the lab.¨
Obviously , Popovic is of the opinion that too much is focused on the big names like Gallo.
¨- As i told, I arrived in US in 1980, because my cell cultures were of interest when it was about to grow HTLV-I. I was also among to prove that HTLV-I could infect T4 cells, and thereby it was an infectious virus. In the end of 1981 we heard about AIDS as a new disease and in May 1982 I began to investigate if HTLV-I could be the cause. I tested if Aids patients got antibodies towards HTLV-I and it didn´t take long until I could state HTLV-I was not the virus causing AIDS. The protocols from these tests were written before the Cold Spring Harbour Conference in September 1983.¨
His superior, Gallo was not to consider the statement from Popovic until far later - at least in his oficial initiatives.
At the Cold Spring Harbour Conference, Luc Montagnier had told the audience their virus LAV was the true AIDS virus. Montagnier and Popovic first met in Budapest in he early 70-ies. In the pre- AIDS era the number of researchers in the world who worked with retroviruses was small where everybody knew eachother. The atmosphere among them was that among good friends. The next time Popovic met with Montagnier was in Gallos privacy in july 1983. Montagnier had offered the testtubes to Gallo with the French LAV ( What was later to be renamed HIV) and they where temoparily stored together with the beer in Gallo´s fridge. This batch of viruses were sooner to be unsuccessfully grown by Popovic. They didn´t survive. In the second attempt arriving in September they were succesfully cultured. And by this achievement Popovic thinks they made a great contribution to AIDS research -¨We were the first to manage to culture virus for mass production. This enabled a test. Besides we were the first to determine that HIV could infect the T4 cells by their contact with the CD4 receptor.¨
To understand the full picture one must know that the Pasteur group had already published their findings in the reputaded Science already in May 1983, although Gallo had intervened and made some essential changes in the text.
-¨The French have to blame themselves¨ thinks Popovic ¨they had opportunities to correct Gallo´s additions.¨
First in April 1984 Popovic and Gallo were ready to publish their manuscript about their laboratory findings considering HIV - at that time called HTLV-III. Popovic wanted to submit further expansions of the research. Gallo wanted to get the credit, because at the well directed press conference that was held April 23rd , eleven days ahead of the publication, Gallo was the big star of the show. In front of TV cameras and journalists Gallo was proclaimed by Health minister Margaret Heckler as the discoverer of the AIDS virus. Popovic was not among. He was in Florida. That it was the virus emanating from the French batch was to be revealed later.
-¨In September 1983 Montagnier, Flossie Wong-Staal (Gallo´s female favorite lab technician) and me discussed for the first time if a contamination could have happened to our cultures, i.e. that LAV had contaminated our cell lines.¨
Virus research is an accurate work - and dificult - or what was expressed by Nobel Prize chairman Hans Wigzell :¨The shit jumps¨.
After the genomic sequences were made and analyzed, it was clear the Gallo HTLV-III and the French LAV were exactly the same virus. The French LAV had contaminated the cell cultures in Popovic lab. Even later on even the French have had difficulties. The first virus they showed came from a patient caled Brugiére and the additional identification BRU , they thought. It later was shown another virus from another patient had also grown in the French cultures. Its extra name was LAI.
-¨Therefore¨, says Popovic.-¨it is necessary to perform highly qualified research before you announce anything.¨ It take some reflection time before Popovic answer the question about who was the second in world to isolate HIV already in 1983 -¨Karpas , maybe, but his publication doesn´t fulfill all criteria on full evidence. Afterwards you may recognize Karpas was right, but if you were to make an investigation of all the reports about new viruses found in animals during the early seventies, probably you would find that a large part was contaminations. That means what was described as one thing in reality was something else..¨
At the alternative AIDS conference in Amsterdam in 1992 the American journalist and author John Lauritsen got the provocative question. ¨Could it still be that Gallo was the first in the world to discover HIV, some time around 1976-77, but then in a virus cocktail culture in his laboratory. If it were to be the case wouldn´t he be honored as the first,not to discover, but to be the inventor of the virus?¨
John Lauritsen answered :¨I can believe anything from Gallo¨.
I wonder if Popovic want to comment on this. Part of the cordial atmosphere disappear - but just for a while. Normally scientists with high credentials usually reject the question as an empty speculation.
Popovic: -¨ What we now know about related viruses points to that HIV originates from a monkey virus.¨
My comment. -¨But it doesn´t answer whether this happened in nature or in the lab. Besides the most frequently utilised monkey virus in AIDS research , the SIVmaq originated artificially by injecting tumor tissue from one monkey specie to another by humans.
Popovic knows about this.
But he doesn´t know about the recently official publication about former classified material that plutonium was injected into human guinea pigs in USA to investigate how dangerous they were. This was done during the Manhattan project, testing the atomic bomb. But Popovic is listening and he nods his consent when we are discussing the possibility that men can utilise research in the wrong direction, for cruelty. Lidice is such an example. The village outside Prague that was erradicated by the Nazis in 1942. At that time Popovic was a half year old baby.
The time for our interview
has come to an end, but we could have gone on for another hour. Popovic
was the man who wanted to speak out and lay down the incorrectnesses -
without avoiding the real hard questions.