Document:Gardiner reviews Misled
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Ben Gardiner's AIDS Info BBS Database
6 January 1996
A subject as complicated as AIDS cannot be described in a few words. Perhaps that's why there have been over 100,000 papers written in the twelve years since it was first recognized. But one of the chief difficulties with AIDS is that it is not even – despite the painful fact that over 300,000 people with AIDS have died – a disease.
[AIDS is Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, not disease. As such, it is the anterior, but never the immediate, cause of death.]
Another difficulty is that it is still not known precisely how or why it comes to some people and not to others. There is no single paper published that shows how it is caused, except in the most vague and insubstantial, inconsistent patterns of guesswork etiology based on incomplete or inaccurate facts.
A third difficulty is that, after 15 years of work, and more than $23 billion spent on research, there is neither cure nor vaccination for it. AIDS is not the first condition that has run up against such problems. Cancer is still with us, still killing people, still of uncertain origin and still with no prevention strategy that is of any use, after several decades of effort and expense.
Medicine used to be referred to as an art, meaning that it is a process by which human beings do things to one another in the hope of alleviating suffering and helping the body to cure itself – as it often does in this life. AIDS seems to baffle the very best of medical intentions and frustrate all doctors, nurses and researchers. Like the scourge of syphilis, it has many ways to conceal itself, many kinds of symptoms to show to its inspectors.
Yet unlike many other tragic plagues, it is not easily caught.
The mystery of AIDS lay heavy on that part of the medical world that was confronted with it at first. Many theories were put forward, and some of them were explored. However, in those days (1980-1983) there were not enough cases of AIDS to allow for full-scale research. In fact it was not really known just how many cases there were, because in many localities the mere admission that a person had AIDS would often give rise to terrible discrimination in housing, jobs and even in medical treatment. Under those conditions it was to be assumed that an uncertain number of AIDS cases would be otherwise described, in order to protect the rights of the patient and close relatives.
One of the first points of real hope came along with the early discovery of "the probable cause of AIDS" in 1984, and it was announced not in a medical journal but at a press conference. As if a great sigh of relief went up, the mystery was brought under control. That was in April 1984. By November of that year, the news had been echoed in every possible publication, and the word "probable" had disappeared from the quotation.
To all apparent purposes, research on the cause of AIDS then came to a quiet standstill. Though there never was any paper published about any proof of causation, it was generally accepted, and the result was a lot of government funding and a lot of government subsidies and a lot of government aid to people disabled by AIDS. The private sector also responded, actually faster than the government, but the effort was based on no proven certainty, only on the declaration by press conference.
Much later, some studies and papers were hastily put together to fill the gap, but by then no one in authority had any interest in examining the details. It was said, by the high and the low in power, that "everyone knows what causes AIDS." Publicity was generated for "prevention" of AIDS, and condoms were given away, needles were given away, advertisements were run on billboards, in newspapers and magazines, in subway and bus cards and in endless public relations stories fed to the press.
However, in March 1987 an article appeared in Cancer Research magazine that discussed a number of things about viruses and which gave reasons why AIDS is not, as the medical jargon goes, either "sufficient or necessary" to produce AIDS in a person. Such a line of reasoning would put the state of affairs on AIDS back to what it was before April 1984 when Margaret Heckler conducted the press conference that declared HIV to be the probable cause of AIDS.
The article was not immediately noticed by much more than the regular readership of that magazine, and it was not until later that year that its author came forward and made a public appearance before a crowd in San Francisco to restate the point and to answer questions. Almost immediately there was a public reaction, and it was not in agreement with Peter Duesberg, the author, a distinguished researcher in the field of retroviruses and a tenured professor at the University of California in Berkeley.
Duesberg has stated a challenge to the hypothesis that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is the cause of AIDS, has repeatedly offered to debate on the subject, but has never been accorded a direct answer or even the courtesy of serious consideration by Dr. Robert C. Gallo, the reputed discoverer of HIV.
Thirteen articles by Duesberg on the subject constitute a 600-page book which is now published in paperback. Among the publishers of these articles are Cancer Research, Science magazine, the National Academy of Science (of which Duesberg is a member), Progress in Nucleic Acid Research and Molecular Biology, Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Bio/Technology, AIDS-Forschung, International Archive of Allergy and Immunology, and Genetica.
Of these, probably the most controversial is the fifth, in Pharmacology and Therapeutics, because in addition to giving a summary of all previous arguments, challenges and statements, it proposes that AIDS in America and Europe has one possible cause and AIDS in Africa and other countries another. Such a division of etiology, while it appears to fit the facts, also lays the groundwork for a much more serious challenge implied to a large part of our society – those who take drugs, from sleeping pills to arsenic. Many people find a hidden threat in the phrase "recreational and anti-HIV drugs" (p. 234) which is deemed to be the true cause of AIDS.
In actuality what is meant are the nucleoside analogue antiviral drugs (like AZT) and such recreational titillators as cocaine, speed, and crack. But these drugs are not named in comments that have been made about Dr. Duesberg's writing. The threat appears to reach beyond what he wrote, judging by the reaction that has mounted against him.
Dr. Duesberg has had poor public relations, no doubt about it. Last year there was a controversy with Brian Ellison, previously his student, about a book which is now the subject of a lawsuit. It seems that Duesberg has been the target for far more abuse and attack than could be warranted either by serious disagreement or by the facts of what he has written.
Now this book appears, even as the incidence of AIDS is clearly increasing at a lesser degree than in the past. Not the end of AIDS, but what may be hoped to be the beginning of the curve of decline, which has nothing to do with the numbers of people ill, a steadily increasing and tragic number. There are many more things to be said, in another book perhaps, about what is wrong with the prevention, perception, treatment, statistic-gathering and research on AIDS.
Duesberg has written, in this anthology of articles, more than enough about AIDS. The question is, will anyone with authority listen? The answer to that is, they will if enough people demand it. And at that time the world can offer its thanks to this dedicated man for persevering against heavy odds.
© 1996 by Ben Gardiner
Originally published at Ben Gardiner's AIDS Info BBS Database
