Wrongful Death: The AIDS Trial

by Stephen Davis

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Please tell the court what you were doing with these chimpanzees.”

  “We were injecting them with live HIV.”

  “Why?”

  “To see if they developed AIDS.”

  “Why?”

  “To see whether HIV was the cause of AIDS.”

  “Oh, you're talking about Koch's Postulate Number Three, that in order for something to be called the causal agent, it has to produce the same disease if injected into a healthy body.”

  “Yes.”

  One by one, Messick was producing testimony that the virus called HIV could not qualify as the cause of AIDS under the conditions required by Koch’s Postulates. So far, he had successfully made it to Postulate Number Three, and he was feeling good about the progress – so good that he thought he’d take another shot at Crawley.

  “So you believed in Koch's Postulates then?”

  “I still do.”

  “Objection, irrelevant.”

  “Sustained. Don’t go there again, Mr. Messick.”

  Oh, well, it was worth a try.

  “Yes, Your Honor. Dr. Spalding, why were you using chimpanzees in your experiments?”

  “They are the closest in DNA to a human being.”

  “And, obviously, you’re not going to inject live HIV into a human being to see if it will kill them, just to satisfy Koch’s Postulate Number Three, correct?”

  “Obviously.”

  “So you use chimpanzees instead?”

  “Correct. That’s pretty standard procedure, Mr. Messick.”

  “Please tell the court exactly what you would do.”

  “We would take the HIV that was being grown in cultures, purify it to full strength, and inject it into the chimps.”

  “Did it work?”

  “In what sense?

  “Did the chimpanzees get sick? Did they develop AIDS?”

  “No.”

  “Any of them?”

  “No.”

  Messick really wants the jury to hear this. If they didn’t understand how HIV violates Koch’s Postulates One and Two, they’re bound to get this one. And it’s worth repeating, even if I risk getting another objection.

  “None of them got sick?”

  “One of them developed some AIDS-like symptoms, but it was not AIDS per se, and it was only one.”

  Crawley must not have been listening. Messick glances over and, sure enough, Crawley was whispering something to Dr. Gallo.

  “Did you check their immune systems, Dr. Spalding?”

  “Yes.”

  “Their immune systems were not destroyed by this potent HIV that was supposedly killing so many humans?”

  “No.”

  “For how long?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did any of them ever get AIDS?”

  “I already told you, no. Never.”

  “Ever?”

  “Your Honor, how many times...” Crawley is obviously listening again.

  “Asked and answered, Mr. Messick. Move on.”

  “But, Your Honor, some of these answers are so hard to believe in light of what the defendants have been telling us for the last thirty years. ­I'm repeating solely out of astonishment...”

  Judge Watts gives Messick a warning look for grandstanding, and he puts up his hands to indicate his compliance.

  “Dr. Spalding, do you know of other people who were doing the same experiments?”

  “Yes. There were about 150 lab chimps involved in similar projects.”

  Messick makes his ceremonial trip to the table to pick up a number of reports and hands them to the witness.

  “Dr. Spalding, I am going to show you several different reports published in several different scientific publications, labeled plaintiffs' exhibits #63 through #65. Do you recognize any of them?”

  “Yes, they are the published reports from me and other colleagues about our attempts to infect chimpanzees with HIV.”

  Spalding hands the reports back to Messick, who hands them on to the Judge.

  “Dr. Spalding, did anyone, anywhere, at any time, have even a single chimpanzee that developed AIDS from these experiments?”

  “No.”

  “Dr. Spalding, if you took these same chimpanzees and injected the tuberculosis bacterium into them, what would happen?”

  “They'd get tuberculosis.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if you took the polio virus and injected it into these same chimpanzees?”

  “They would all get polio.”

  “Without exception?”

  “Yes.”

  “And isn't that what Koch's Postulate Number Three requires for something to qualify as a causal agent – that it creates the disease 100% of the time if injected into an otherwise healthy body?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet, not only did this virus called HIV not create AIDS in 100% of the chimpanzees, it didn't create AIDS in a single one? Is that what you're saying?”

  “That is correct.”