Therefore, by April 1984, isolates of the AIDS virus had been made at the Pasteur, NCI, CDC, and UCSF, all of which were discovered after substantially less than a year of research. What delayed the NCI, therefore, was not the difficulty in finding the virus but their reluctance to even look. Most CDC researchers privately believed that if the NCI had begun serious laboratory efforts in 1981, the virus could have been detected by 1982, before it had made its vast penetration into American life. Although all the scientists who made the viral isolations certainly deserved applause, the discovery
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