The discovery of the HIV virus

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1983, scientists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris became the first to identify the HIV virus. It was a vital step in fighting one of the worst epidemics in modern history, AIDS. The Pasteur had been asked to investigate after reports of a mystery disease that was spreading rapidly, particularly among the gay community. Two weeks later, scientist Françoise Barré-Sinoussi detected the virus while working on a biopsy sample in the laboratory. She and the team leader, Luc Montagnier were later awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. But the discovery could easily have been missed, as she tells Jane Wilkinson. (Photo: French virologists Jean-Claude Chermann, Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier. Credit: Michel Philippot/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Jane
0:09.4	Wilkinson. We're going back to 1983 to a science laboratory in France and the discovery
0:15.7	of the virus behind one of the worst epidemics in modern history.
0:20.2	The acquired immune deficiency syndrome, AIDS for short, is a mystery. The only certainty
0:25.6	is that it kills. Not directly, but by so weakening the body's defences, that any outside
0:31.4	infection can prove fatal.
0:34.2	That was a BBC report from the 1980s about a disease that's killed more than 40 million
0:39.4	people worldwide and has infected another 38 million.
0:46.1	But our story begins in Paris, where a young scientist called François Barry Sinosi was
0:51.6	working at the Pasteur Institute. It had taken her a fight to get there.
0:56.5	It was a huge world for women to be at the highest levels in laboratories. The deputy director
1:05.0	of Pasteur Institute at that time, he said to me, you're really thinking about making
1:11.2	a career in science. I don't know any woman who really made a very fantastic career in science,
1:20.4	so you better forget it.
1:22.8	Fortunately, François ignored the advice. By 1982, she was working in a team run by research
1:29.5	scientist Luke Montagne, and then in December, the team got a call.
1:34.7	A clinician in France contacted the Pasteur Institute and asking us if we were interested
1:42.6	to work on these new emerging disease, which was not called yet AIDS at that time.
1:53.2	So we say, why not? But we have no information at all about it.
1:59.0	So a meeting was organized, and it's really at that time that I heard about AIDS for the
2:06.5	first time.
2:08.1	François was not alone. In the United States, reports were just emerging of an illness
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.