A Controversy That Will Not Die: The Role Of HIV In Causing AIDS

While the most quoted dissenter says the virus plays no part, there is a broad diversity of opinion in the scientific community on its function. When the journal Science ran an eight-page special report in December, it got a lot of attention which, after all, is what special reports are intended for. But this one, devoted to a single researcher, was highly unusual. Called "The Duesberg Phenomenon," it presented University of California, Berkeley, retrovirologist Peter Duesberg's unorthodox vie

Written byBilly Goodman

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While the most quoted dissenter says the virus plays no part, there is a broad diversity of opinion in the scientific community on its function.

When the journal Science ran an eight-page special report in December, it got a lot of attention which, after all, is what special reports are intended for. But this one, devoted to a single researcher, was highly unusual. Called "The Duesberg Phenomenon," it presented University of California, Berkeley, retrovirologist Peter Duesberg's unorthodox views of AIDS causation (J. Cohen, Science, 266:1642-9, 1994).

Duesberg, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, does not believe that HIV causes AIDS defining-diseases (see Opinion, page 12). Virtually all American AIDS cases, he wrote in Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapy in 1992 (46:3-15), are the result of recreational and anti-HIV drugs. In its December 9 issue, Science considered Duesberg's views seriously and went to great length to examine and, ultimately, rebut them.

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