LAV discovered

In May 1983, two doctors at the Pasteur Institute in France, Luc Montagnier and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, report the discovery of a new retrovirus called Lymphadenopathy-Associated Virus (or LAV) that could be the cause of AIDS – the virus later known as HIV. While they do not specifically state that LAV is the cause of AIDS, the isolation of LAV is critical for definitively confirming this.