What the Dingell staff's report had to say

Following are excerpts from the Dingell staff's report:

One of the most remarkable and regrettable aspects of the institutional
response to the defense of Gallo et al is how readily public service and
science apparently were subverted into defending the indefensible.
Neither
(HHS nor Justice Department) officials and attorneys, once the dispute
was under way, (dealt) responsibly with the accumulating evidence that
there were serious problems in the U.S. government's claims. Instead,
they
pushed on with their "litigation strategy," all the while adding
deception to deception, consuming untold resources and squandering
scientific
and international good will.

The fraud became self-perpetuating. Defending the indefensible became
a reflex, until ultimately, the cover-up was so burdened with falsehoods
that its collapse was inevitable. HHS officials and attorneys should have
recognized early on that the falsehoods could not be indefinitely
sustained.
But HHS sought only to "defend the position." HHS did not honor
the public trust.

The violence to principles of responsible, ethical science was just
as profound. At a crucial point early in the (Gallo laboratory's) HIV
research,
international politics and the technocrats committed to those politics
virtually took over that research, claiming the laboratory's putative
accomplishments
as accomplishments of the United States administration and by extension,
the United States itself.

Once done, the (Gallo laboratory's) interests became the government's
interests; defending the (Gallo laboratory) scientists' reputations and
claimed accomplishments became necessary for defending the honor of the
United States. The defense thus became a consuming effort for significant
portions of the U.S. government.

The result was a costly, prolonged defense of the indefensible in which
the (Gallo laboratory's) "science" became an integral element
of the U.S. government's public relations/advocacy efforts. The
consequences
for HIV research were severely damaging, leading, in part, to a corpus
of scientific papers polluted with systematic exaggerations and outright
falsehoods of unprecedented proportions. *