Inventing the AIDS Virus, by Peter Duesberg and AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science, by Neville Hodgkinson from The Suppresion of Dissent and Innovative Ideas in Science and Medicine: A work in Progress, by James DeMeo, Ph.D.

[An Excerpt]

Inventing the AIDS Virus, by Peter Duesberg (Regenery, NY, 1997) and AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science, by Neville Hodgkinson (Fourth Estate, London 1996), document the ongoing efforts of a small dissenting group of virologists and physicians critical of the HIV hypothesis of AIDS. Serious and significant problems exist in this predominant theory, which assumes the virus HIV is the cause. Criticisms focus on contradictory epidemiological evidence which suggests other causes, on problems with claims of pure-strain isolates of HIV, on problems with suitable proof for the efficacy of the so-called "AIDS tests" (which may yield false-positive rates of 100% due to the problem with unsuitable isolation of HIV), and with toxic medical treatments offered to AIDS patients such as AZT -- a DNA-chain terminator which among the other "AIDS treatment drugs" have side-effects indistinguishable from clinical AIDS, and which therefore may in fact be the cause of a large percentage of the pathology and death attributed to HIV.

Peter Duesberg, professor of Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley, and his approximately 500 associated scientists in the "Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV Hypothesis of AIDS", have been almost completely excluded from open or on-going discussion and critique of these problems. HIV critics are generally forbidden from presentation at AIDS conferences (most are basically "trade association" meetings organized and funded by pharmacy companies), and are censored from publishing in the mainstream journals. A blackout of their ideas exists within popular media as well. Duesberg's book Inventing the AIDS Virus has special sections on "Censorship in the Media" and also "Censorship in the Professional Literature" containing full details and citations. Some examples: Members of the National Academy of Sciences have always had their papers automatically published in the Proceedings of the NAS -- Duesberg is a member of the NAS, but the NAS editorial board made a first-time exception and excluded his paper critical of the HIV hypothesis. His NAS "Outstanding Investigator" research grant was also terminated. His letters of rebuttal to Nature magazine were routinely forbidden by editor John Maddox, who finally advertised the censorship with an editorial "Has Duesberg a Right of Reply?" answering the question himself with an emphatic "NO".

The news media also has "fallen into line" with the orthodox theory, and journalists will rarely publish anything which contradicts the official party line of the Centers for Disease Control -- public discussion of the AIDS-HIV issues are today dominated by those whom Duesberg calls "AIDS Millionaires", scientists who have gotten very rich from stock options and patent rights on the various "tests" and "treatments" flowing from the dominant HIV hypothesis. Reporters who deviate from the party-line of AIDS orthodoxy rarely get their articles published, or if so, are excoriated afterwards, thereby lowering their own job-status and employability. Major aspects of the HIV theory thereby are cloaked under large myths of great scientific breakthroughs, when in fact the whole science of HIV is riddled with unproven assumptions, glaring contradictions, and stunning breaches of scientific ethics. For example, Robert Gallo did not present his "evidence" on HIV being the "cause of AIDS" for peer review, but rather held a press conference with Margaret Heckler of the Department of Health and Human Services, on the same day the patent rights were being filed. Gallo was subsequently charged with scientific misconduct by the Office of Scientific Integrity of the NIH for taking -- stealing -- his sample of HIV from Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Gallo's HIV photos in his earliest papers, and certain cell lines grown in his lab yielding HIV for the lucrative patents on "AIDS tests" were taken from the French samples previously loaned to him in the spirit of scientific cooperation. A subsequent lawsuit by the French resulted in an out-of-court settlement and a French-American sharing of the lucrative patent rights for the so-called "AIDS Test", and the writing of an "official history" that erased any mention of the serious breaches of scientific ethics. Gallo's political influences at the DHHS eventually brought him an exoneration, of sorts: the investigators significantly raised the "burden of proof" for scientific misconduct and officially "acquitted" Gallo, and then dropped investigation of the remaining serious charges. He lost his post at NIH, however, as the political perfume could not completely cover up the stink of his misdeeds.
Today, Montagnier asserts that AIDS needs "something more than HIV", while Duesberg and others assert HIV is not the cause at all. For daring to make this challenge, Duesberg has not only suffered the above-mentioned censorship and loss of laboratory funding at UC Berkeley. He is today treated like a pariah, isolated. Were it not for his tenure, he surely would have already been fired. He is today given mainly undergraduate courses to teach, pushed off important research committees (and instead assigned to the "picnic committee", etc.) and few graduate students will dare to speak with him, much less take his courses, for fear of having their own careers ruined. One young top-notch student I know of was thrown out of his Ph.D. program for daring to ask difficult questions of his professors at an "open forum on AIDS" -- this is not an uncommon event, as many students will testify that it is professionally risky to anger a professor by asking questions they cannot answer.

Significantly, John Maddox, the former Editor of Nature magazine which figured prominently in the censoring of Duesberg and other HIV critics later was an invited guest speaker at the First World Skeptics Conference hosted by CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal), a wholely unethical anti-scientific organization which does no research. CSICOP publishes Skeptical Inquirer, a publication which likewise refuses to allow persons attacked in its pages the right of published rebuttal (this I know from personal experience). Maddox also figures into other serious breaches of scientific ethics, as discussed below.

The bottom line of all this is: few or none of the research papers being published today on the subject of AIDS are given any form of effective critical peer review -- HIV critics aren't tolerated on journal editorial boards, aren't actively consulted for their views on papers submitted for publication (even if they are world-class researchers in the field of retrovirology, as with Duesberg), and aren't allowed to publish critical articles or letters-to-the-editor pointing out serious flaws in articles that are published.