SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 94143

December 19, 1954

Dr. David IJ. Kingsbury
Sir William Dunn School of

University of Oxford
South Parks Road
Oxford OX1 3RE
ENGLAND

Pathology

Dear David:

  Thanks for your newsLettere As you prc,ably know, we have updated
the summary of Retroviridae for Intervirology (a minor task), and we are
anticipating some difficulty with finding a suitable name for the AIDS
virus. I am waiting for the dust to settle from the nucleotide sequencing
(done or almost done in four labs at least) before convening a subcommittee.
But it is clear that the AIDS virus is no more related to HTLV-I than to
any other retrovirus on the basis of sequence comparison. Would you like to
tell Bob Gallo it shouldn't be called HTLV-ITI?

Best regards,

Harold E, Varmus, M.D.
American Cancer Society
Professor of Molecular Virology

HEV/ j m