Abstract
For a decade, there has been increasing concern about ‘AIDS’ and a virus called ‘HIV’ which is said to cause ‘AIDS’. Having named this virus ‘HIV’ — Human Immunodeficiency Virus — contributes to making people accept that ‘HIV is the cause of AIDS’. However, to an extent which undermines classical standards of science, some purported scientific results concerning ‘HIV’ and ‘AIDS’ have been handled by press releases, by disinformation, by low quality studies, and by some suppression of information, manipulating the media and people at large. I am not here concerned with intent, but with scientific standards, especially the ability to tell the difference between a fact, an opinion, a hypothesis, and a hole in the ground. As we shall see shortly, there does not even exist a single proper definition of ‘AIDS’ on which discourse can reliably be based. One difficulty of which most people are not aware, lies in faulty terminology and different impressions by different people of what ‘AIDS’ means. Thus a morass about HIV and AIDS has been created.
Reprinted from the Yale Scientific, fall 1994, updated 5 January 1995.
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References
For instance, in the publication Confronting AIDS Update by the Institute of Medicine (1988), we find:
p. 207: ‘The following revised case definition for surveillance of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was developed by CDC in collaboration with public health and clinical specialists... The objectives of the revision are a) to track more effectively the severe disabling morbidity associated with infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)…’
p. 208: ‘For national reporting, a case of AIDS is defined as an illness characterized by one or more of the following ‘indicator’ diseases, depending on the status of laboratory evidence of HIV infection, as shown below’.
The updating occurs in the CDC publication Morb. Mort. Weekly Rep. 41 No. RR17 (1 December 1992), giving ‘the revised classification system for HIV infection and expanded surveillance case definition for AIDS…’. This document asserts:
p. 1. ‘The etiologic agent of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome is a retrovirus designated Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)…
p. 2. ‘Persons with AIDS-indicator conditions (Category C) as well as those with CD4+ T-lymphocyte counts <200 µL (Categories A3 or B3) will be reportable as AIDS cases…’
p. 4. ‘Diagnostic criteria for AIDS-defining conditions included in the expanded surveillance case definition are presented in Appendix C…’, which contains the 29 diseases, including Kaposi’s sarcoma.
for the flue, Mac Kenzie, W.R., Davis, J.P., Peterson, D.E., Hibbard, A.J., Becker, G. and Zarvan, B.S., ‘Multiple false-positive serologic tests for HIV, HTLV-1, and Hepatitis C following Influenza vaccination’, J. Am. Med. Assoc. 268 (1992) pp. 1015–1017.
for tuberculosis, Pitchenik, A.E., Burr, J.J., Suarez, M., Fertel, D., Gonzalez, G. and Moas, C., ‘Human T-cell lymphotropic virus-III (HTLV-lIl) seropositivity and related disease among 71 consecutive patients in whom tuberculosis was diagnosed: a prospective study’, Am. Rev. Respir. Dis. 135 (1987) pp. 875–879.
also for tuberculosis, St. Louis, U.E., Rauch, K.J., Peterson, L.R. et al. ‘Seroprevalence rates of human immunodeficiency virus infection at sentinel hospitals in the United States’, N. Eng. J. Med. 323 (1990) pp. 213–218.
for leprosy, Kashala, O., Marlink, R., Ilunga, M., Diese, M., Gormus, B., Xu, K., Mukeba, P, Kasongo, K. and Essex, M., ‘Infection with Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 (HIV-1) and Human T Cell Lymphotropic Viruses among Leprosy Patients and Contacts: Correlation between HIV-1 Cross-Reactivity and Antibodies to Lipoarabinomannan’, J. Inf. Dis. 169 (1994) pp. 296–304.
Biggar, R.J., ‘Possible nonspecific associations between malaria and HTLV-III/LAV’, N. Engl. J. Med. 315 (1986) p. 457.
Biggar, R.J., Gigase, P.L., Melbye, M., Kestens, L., Sarin, P.S., Bodner, A.J., Demedts, P., Stevens, W.J., Paluku, L., C., D.H. et al., ‘ELISA HTLV retrovirus antibody reactivity associated with malaria and immune complexes in healthy Africans’, Lancet 2 (1985) pp. 520–523.
Volsky, D.J., Wu, Y.T., Stevenson, M., Dewhurst, S., Sinangil, F., Merino, F.L.R. and Godoy, G., ‘Antibodies to HTLV-IIULAV in Venezuelan patients with acute malarial infections [letter]’, N. Engl. J. Med. 10 (1986) pp. 647–648.
For a more extensive account of such studies, see E. Papadopulos-Eleopulos, V.F. Turner, J.M. Papadimitriou, and Harvey Bialy, `AIDS IN AFRICA: DISTINGUISHING FACT FROM FICTION’, in press, World J. Microbiology & Biotechnology, 1995. Bialy is research editor of Biotechnology, and was an active participant at the AAAS Pacific Division meeting on HIV and AIDS, 21 June 1994; see below.
There are indications that mortality in the AZT group was substantially higher than in the placebo group. An editorial analysis is given in The Lancet, 7 August 1994 under the title: `Zidovudine for mother, fetus, and child: hope or poison’. `Zidovudine’ is another name for AZT. Duesberg has also pointed to the toxic effects of AZT. So did Kary Mullis in his California Monthly interview, where he said that `most people who have HIV don’t ever get AIDS, although people who have HIV and no symptoms and take AZT die… But they die from the poison AZT, not from AIDS’.
Actually, Mullis in April 1994 was at a scientific meeting in Europe, where he is reported to have acted like a jerk. Cf. a letter to Nature by John F Martin, President of the European Society for Clinical Investigation, Nature 371, 8 September 1994. His capacity for acting like a jerk (his own word) was mentioned in his California Monthly interview. Nobody I know is hiding this aspect of his personality. My conclusion about dealing with Kary Mullis is to separate what he does on a personal basis, and which has sometimes been objectionable, from the insights he provides as a scientist when he’s not behaving like a jerk.
He does not always act like a jerk at meetings, for instance at the Pacific Division AAAS meeting (see below), where he raised perfectly valid questions. The answer which Kary Mullis gave to the quote from Baltimore, extracted at the beginning of this article, was very sensible, to the effect that what he believes about AIDS is irrelevant, because beliefs have to do with religion, and we are attempting to deal with science. What is scientifically relevant is what documentation is available about the nature of HIV and its effects, and what documentation is available about various diseases and antibodies for certain viruses or bacilli.
It is unfortunate that in addition to all other problems one is facing in the confrontation about HIV and AIDS, one has to cope with the personal behavior of a scientist who had enough insight to discover PCR. It is left for participants in the HIV-AIDS debate to sort out the personal behavior from the scientific one.
New York Times, 10 December 1993, p. A9. Sample from this article:
But the newspaper’s latest crusade — a series of articles or prominently displayed articles boldly arguing that the AIDS epidemic in Africa is a myth and strongly suggesting that HIV is not the way the AIDS infection spreads — has provoked bewilderment and anger among some Government health officials, AIDS organizations and many scientists, some of whom have accused The Sunday Times of betraying the public trust and misleading its four million readers…
Dissident theories on the putative cause of AIDS, including those of Dr. Peter Duesberg, an American molecular biologist, have been widely debated over the last decade and dismissed by most Government and research organizations as scientifically unsound...
In addition to Nature’s stinging attack, The Sunday Times’s coverage has prompted criticism from Government officials, charities, and relief agencies involved with AIDS. Kate O’Neil, a spokeswoman for the Terrence Higgins Trust, Britain’s largest AIDS charity, said she agreed that newspapers have a responsibility to question any orthodox view. `But the problem is, they are not giving all the facts, which means they are misleading some and giving others false’, Ms. O’Neil said.
Neville Hodgkinson, The Sunday Times’s science editor and the author of most of the stories, said the paper is serving the public interest by telling readers that serious scientists and researchers dissent strongly from the accepted view that HIV causes AIDS.
The phrase ‘whatever Duesberg’s friends say’ is an example of Maddox’s tendentious journalism. It contains an innuendo that only Duesberg’s friends raise questions about the right of reply. But questions about the right of reply are independent of whether one is a friend of Duesberg or not. See also footnote 13
Kary Mullis deals with this quote in his California Monthly interview. What is a ‘fact’ for Baltimore (of Imanishi-Kari fame) may not be a fact at all. One of the criteria of scientific standards is the ability to tell the difference between a fact, an opinion, a hypothesis, and a hole in the ground.
‘AIDS Rebels Try to Steal Show’, 26 May p. A14; ‘AIDS Symposium Changes Line Up’, 7 June p. A15; ‘S.F. Science Conference to Debate Cause of AIDS’, 18 June p. A6; ‘Controversial AIDS Theories Debated at Forum in S.F.’, 22 June p. A7.
Nature identifies the authors as follows: Michael S. Ascher and Haynes W. Sheppard are in the Viral and Rickettsial Disease Laboratory, California Department of Health Services, 2151 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94704. Warren Winkelstein Jr. and Eric Vittinghoff are in the Department of Biomedical and Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720.
See two articles: ‘Can epidemiology determine whether drugs or HIV cause AIDS?’, by Peter Duesberg, Aidsforschung vol. 12 (1993) pp. 627–635; and ‘HIV as a surrogate marker for drug use: A re-analysis of the San Francisco Men’s Health Study’ by Bryan J. Ellison, Allen B. Downey, and Peter H. Duesberg, this volume.
Maddox also claims it is Nature’s responsibility to ‘censor’ information. An interview with Der Spiegel (45/1994, p. 229), headed ‘Filtern und zensieren’ — Interview mit John Maddox über die Rolle seiner Zeitschrift Nature, contains the following exchange:
DER SPIEGEL. Wissenschaftler werfen Ihnen vor, Nature übe mit seinem Gutachtersystem zuviel Macht aus. Die Informationen würden gefiltert…
MADDOX…. sogar zensiert: Wir haben uns zum Beispiel geweigert, die These von Peter Duesberg zu veröffentlichen, nicht HIV, sondern Drogenkonsum sei die Ursache von Aids.
These co-authors include especially Harvey Bialy, research editor of Biotechnology. Cohen tried to interview me. I asked that his questions be put in writing, and he faxed me a letter containing many others (for instance the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis), as part of ‘the Duesberg phenomenon’. What has ‘not gone away’ is that an increasing number of individual scientists, with different points of view, different backgrounds, and different responsibilities, have publicly documented reservations about the official position of the government or the scientific establishment concerning HIV and AIDS. Lumping together independent scientists under the single category of Duesberg ‘supporters’ skewed the perspective on the dissenters and on their multiple reasons for dissent. questions on 1 November 1994. I found Cohen’s questions and statements so defective that I refused to deal with him, and wrote a letter to Koshland explaining in detail why I refused to deal with Cohen. I made a line by line analysis of Cohen’s letter to me. For example, Cohen wrote me: ‘You extensively cite Duesberg’s writings and references that he has provided you with, yet I do not see any other references of AIDS literature. Have you investigated the AIDS literature to address the question about the link between HIV and AIDS?’
Cohen was referring to the present article, which I had sent to him before publication in the Yale Scientific. As I wrote to Koshland, Cohen’s statement (‘Yet I do not see…’) documents blindness, as well as incompetence in processing information. To cite just two examples, in my article I quote from a paper by Papadopoulos et al. (especially Bialy), and I devote an entire section to the paper by Ascher et al., published by Nature, and reported in the New York Times among many other newspapers which took seriously a press release by Nature. I did not get either of these papers from Duesberg. Bialy himself sent me his preprint.
In any case, what of it if Duesberg is kind enough to provide me with scholarly references at my request? I learned that malaria tests false positive for HIV antibodies from the Kary Mullis interview in the California Monthly, and I learned of a similar situation with respect to leprosy and tuberculosis from Neville Hodgkinson in the London Sunday Times. I asked Duesberg to provide me with the scholarly references to that effect, and he brought to my attention the actual scientific papers by others, reporting these facts. Scientifically, it does not matter who provided me with these references or when, but it was appropriate to acknowledge Duesberg for his bibliographical help.
Y. Chang et al., ‘Identification of Herpesvirus-Like DNA Sequences in AIDS-Associated Kaposi’s Sarcoma’, Science (16 December 1994) pp. 1865–1869.
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Lang, S. (1996). HIV and AIDS: Have we been misled?. In: Duesberg, P.H. (eds) AIDS: Virus- or Drug Induced?. Contemporary Issues in Genetics and Evolution, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1651-7_19
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