Challenges

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Challenges (ISBN 0387948619) is a 1998 book by the AIDS dissident Serge Lang which chronicles his many years of activism in the science community. It contains many of his "files" on HIV and AIDS.

limited preview at Google Books

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Preface
Academia, Journalism, and Politics: A Case Study: The Huntington Case
Strange Survey of U.S. Profs: The Ladd-Lipset Case
Questions of Scientific Responsibility: The Baltimore Case
Questions of Editorial Responsibility: Publication of the Baltimore Article
The Gallo Case
The Case of HIV and AIDS
The Shafaravich Case and the National Academy of Sciences
Maintaining Scientific Standards
Index

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Quotes

Serge Lang

HIV and AIDS

Some scientists, including especially Peter Duesberg for several years have challenged the hypothesis that "HIV is the cause of AIDS," and have provided some evidence for their challenge. In the past, I myself have sometimes used the expression "AIDS virus" in referring to HIV. In light of existing documentation, all such references should be amended to contain the qualification "alleged." At the time this essay is written, I do not regard the causal relationship between HIV and any disease as settled. I have seen considerable evidence that highly improper statistics concerning HIV and AIDS have been passed off as science, and that top members of the scientific establishment have carelessly, if not irresponsibly, joined the media in spreading misinformation about the nature of AIDS and its connection with HIV or its connection with the use (possibly repeated use) of certain drugs. Specifically:

No scientific piece of evidence. Some scientists (including Peter Duesberg and Kary Mullis, independently), have pointed out that there is no scientific piece of evidence showing that HIV causes any disease. For instance Kary Mullis is quoted in an interview (California Monthly, September 1994 p. 20):

What happened was so simple I don't understand why it never happened to other people. In the late 1980s, I was working for several companies that were using PCR to detect HIV sequences. I would get into a situation where I'd have to write a little report on what was going on at one of the companies. And I would find myself in a position of having to write a sentence that said, "HIV is the probable cause of AIDS."

I figured there must be a standard reference or two I could use to back up that statement. So I just yelled across the room, "What's the reference for 'HIV is the cause of AIDS'"? Some guy said, "Oh you don't need a reference for that. Everybody knows that." And I said, "I think it should be footnoted. When you make a direct statement like that you give a source. You say, "Here's how I know that's true. I think it's good form."

So he said, "Why don't you cite this Centers for Communicable Diseases [CDC] report?" He gave it to me. It was a stupid little thing, without scientific merit; you might as well quote the New York Times. So I went to other people in the lab, and I started looking at the scientific literature, and I began to notice that nobody ever quoted a scientific paper to back up the notion that HIV causes AIDS.

Both Duesberg and Mullis have emphasized that the papers of Montagnier, Gallo or others do not provide any scientific justification that HIV causes a disease. They asked for such papers but none was forthcoming. In his California Monthly interview, Mullis tells how he began to think there was "something fishy" about evasive answers he was getting to his questions. He tells about the way he confronted Montagnier in San Diego, after Montagnier had given a talk on AIDS. Mullis "noticed that Montagnier hadn't said one word about how come we ought to think HIV is the cause of AIDS." After the talk Mullis asked Montagnier directly for a scientific reference, and Montagnier admitted that none existed.

Duesberg wrote a letter dated 11 February 1993 to Harold Jaffe, Director of the HIV/AIDS Division at the CDC. In that letter, Duesberg asked: "Exactly which papers are now considered proof or, if there is no proof, the best support for the HIV-AIDS hypothesis?" Not a single specific paper was mentioned in Jaffe's reply. Jaffe only gave what he viewed as epidemiological evidence.

(Challenges, p. 613)

A STATEMENT, Received 24 July 1997

Within the medical-scientific community, HIV is widely accepted as the causative agent of AIDS. Notwithstanding this consensus, a group of knowledgeable scientists have raised a number of meaningful questions about this thesis, while some remain unconvinced of its validity.

In this chapter, Prof. Serge Lang has well documented the basis of this controversy and has provided a sobering picture for the reader of the polity of thinking that has characterized this field. For example, legitimate questions about the effects of HIV and the role of cofactors in the pathogenesis of the immune dysfunction that is the hallmark of AIDS remain unanswered by those who are the proponents of conventional thinking in this field. Models of how HIV and cells of the immune system replicate, which have not yet sustained the rigor of thorough scientific discussion and critique at both the biological and mathematical level, are accepted as if they were laws of nature. Major journals and scientific meetings have often failed to provide a forum for legitimate criticism of these models and other issues pertaining to HIV. Lang points out that this is an abuse of the process by which science seeks to achieve a complete understanding of a problem and that if a hypothesis is correct, it should be able to sustain legitimate critique. He properly alerts us to the dangers that rigidity of thinking holds for the advancement of scientific understanding.

As well, Lang asks to what extent are readers of scientific journals correctly informed of various points of view and do editors assert unreasonable control over the terms of disclosure in their journals? These are clearly important and disturbing questions. A review of the scenarios which Lang has painted should give the thoughtful reader pause as well as some insight into how doctrinaire thinking can develop and be perpetuated.

A. Arthur Gottlieb, M.D., F.A.C.P.
Professor and Chairman
Department of Microbiology/immunology
Professor of Medicine
Tulane University School of Medicine
1430 Tulane Ave.
New Orleans, LA 70117

(Challenges, p. 714)

Conclusion

So once more my admonition is that the responsibility for maintaining standards lies with individuals. Given the repeated institutional failures of the past, one cannot count on our official organizations or on the leaders of science to provide either leadership or support. Each one has to find one's own means to alert those around us to the failures which have been analyzed and documented in this book, and others like them. Each one has the responsibility to create an atmosphere where others will feel free to speak out openly and clearly. The final test of success for this book lies in the corrective actions people will take in the future.

(Challenges, p. 796)

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