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FRENCH SUE U.S. OVER AIDS VIRUS DISCOVERY
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN and SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMESDEC. 14, 1985

The article as it originally appeared.

December 14, 1985, Page 001001
The New York Times Archives
Intensifying a bitter dispute over who first established the cause of AIDS, officials of the Pasteur Institute, a leading French research organization, announced today that it had sued the United States Government.

The director of the institute, Raymond Dedonder, contended at a news conference that its research team headed by Dr. Luc Montagnier found the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome and developed the first test to detect antibodies to the virus in 1983, a year before an American team led by Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute.

Professor Dedonder said that after months of fruitless negotiations with American officials over recognition of the institute's contributions to AIDS research and related commercial rights, the institute was suing to have its ''rights recognized in the name of the scientific ethic.''

But Dr. Gallo, the American researcher, said in a telephone interview that the Pasteur Institute was exaggerating its contributions. ''We helped them a lot more than they helped us,'' he said.

Patent rights to a procedure for detecting antibodies to the AIDS virus in blood have become both the material and symbolic center of the dispute. In the suit, the Pasteur Institute charges that the American researchers made use of virus specimens and research data supplied by the French when isolating the AIDS virus and developing a viral antibody test.

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https://www.nytimes.com/1985/12/14/world/french-sue-us-over-aids-virus-discovery.html