Med School President Hits Queens College on AIDS Center a Queens Courier Exclusive

The president of New York Medical College threw cold water on Queens College’s plans to build a huge $30 million AIDS research and development facility on its campus last week.
Msgr. Harry C. Barrett, president of the College, criticized the Bernard and Gloria Salick Center for Molecular and Cellular Biology last week minutes after signing an agreement to collaborate with St. John’s University on biomedical education and research programs.
"Creating an AIDS program there is not a good move," Barrett said. "It’s the wrong environment. It should be built on the grounds of a medical school."
The Center, which will be directed by Dr. Luc Montagnier, the world-renowned AIDS researcher who first isolated the AIDS virus, HIV-1 in 1983, was the focus of a long-time project undertaken by the College’s President Allen Lee Sessoms, and Bernard Salick, a College trustee and millionaire.
Sessoms and Salick were both instrumental in persuading Montagnier to operate the AIDS center from the Queens College campus in Flushing.
In answer to charges that Queens College has no medical campus, a University spokesperson, Ron Cannova, said the University does have relationships with medical centers. He said it is affiliated with State University of New York (Downstate), a major medical school in Brooklyn, New York Hospital Queens and Elmhurst Hospital Medical Center.
The presidents of St. John’s and New York Medical College signed an alliance last week at a news conference called at St John’s
The collaboration is expected to provide opportunities for graduate students from each institution to cross-register, thereby expanding course offerings for both universities.
The agreement calls for developing joint degree nd certificate programs to capitalize on the expertise of both institutions in the clinical or health science, business and law.
Rev. Donald J. Harrington, St. John’s president, said the program will enable minority students at St. John’s to train at New York Medical College and earn an M.D. degree.
St. John’s University, the largest Catholic university in the country, has an enrollment of more than 18,500 students on three campuses.
New York Medical College in Valhalla, N.Y. has 1,600 students and is a health science university.