Gallo had trailblazed the technique of “science by press release” four years earlier, when he had staged an HHS press event to announce that the probable cause of AIDS had been found, a retrovirus that would later be named the “Human Immunodeficiency Virus” or “HIV.” The press reported Gallo’s discovery as scientific fact, even though Gallo had not published a peer-reviewed paper supporting his enormously consequential assertion. Here was a useful innovation that allowed regulatory officials to craft and control the public narrative from inception. The science was what the regulators declared
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