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WASHINGTON - US SCIENTIST Robert Gallo on Monday congratulated his European colleagues who won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine for their work in discovering the virus that causes Aids.
Dr Gallo, who is commonly credited as the pathogen's co-discoverer but was left unrewarded by the Nobel committee, applauded the winning pair for their work and thanked France's Luc Montagnier for recognising his contribution.
'I congratulate this year's Nobel Prize winners. I am pleased my long-time friend and colleague Dr Luc Montagnier, as well as his colleague Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, have received this honour,' Dr Gallo said in a statement.
'I was gratified to read Dr Montagnier's kind statement this morning expressing that I was equally deserving,' he added.
Dr Montagnier and Dr Barre-Sinoussi of France's Pasteur Institute jointly won half of the 2008 award for their work in isolating the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
Dr Harald zur Hausen of Germany won the other half of the award for going against the then-current dogma and claiming that a virus, the human papilloma virus (HPV), causes cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women.
Dr Gallo also congratulated his German colleague and said he was 'pleased that the Nobel Committee chose to recognise the importance of Aids with these awards'. He added that he was 'proud that my colleagues and I continue to search for an Aids vaccine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Institute of Human Virology'.
Both Dr Montagnier and Dr Gallo are co-credited with discovering in the early 1980s that HIV causes Aids, although for several years they staked rival claims that led to a legal and even diplomatic dispute between France and the United States.
The Nobel jury made no mention of Dr Gallo in its citation.
Without minimising Dr Gallo's contribution to the discovery, Hans Joernvall of the Nobel committee told AFP earlier that Dr Gallo had 'done a lot of other work' in the field, but that Dr Gallo and the two French scientists now 'agree that the discovery was made in Paris'.
'We gave the prize for the discovery of the virus. The two to whom we gave the prize, Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier, discovered the virus,' Dr Joernvall said.
The laureates will receive a gold medal, a diploma and 10 million Swedish kronor (S$2.03 million) - half for Dr Zur Hausen and half for the French pair - at a formal ceremony in Stockholm on December 10.
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