From: ingria@bbn.com (Bob Ingria)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Cause of AIDS
Date: 20 Aug 1992 17:42:22 GMT
Distribution: world,local
Reply-To: ingria@BBN.COM
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In-reply-to: titmas@chdasic.sps.mot.com's message of 20 Aug 92 16:52:51 GMT

In article <1992Aug20.165251.29875@newsgate.sps.mot.com> titmas@chdasic.sps.mot.com (Eric Titmas) writes:

   From the article "Heretic" by Tom Bethell in the 5/92 edition of _The American Spectator_

Was this the issue in which P. J. O'Rourke suggested taking target
practice at Liberals?

	 "Heretic" is a much admired category in contemporary liberal thought -
	 provided the heretic in question is safely dead.  (Galileo comes to
	 mind.)  The other day I went to hear a live one,  one who was giving
	 a lecture to students at the University of California in Berkeley.  His
	 name is Peter Duesberg.  Born in Germany in 1936,  he is a professor of
	 molecular and cell biology at the university,  and a member of the 
	 National Academy of Sciences.  He has been a pioneer in cancer-gene
	 research,  and was the first to map the genetic structure of retro-
	 viruses.  His heresy -- a whopper -- is his claim that the human 
	 immunodeficiency virus,  HIV,  is benign and does not cause AIDS.

	 In a recent(1992) articcle published in _Biomedicine and Pharmocotherapy_,
	 Duesberg summarizes a mass of data as follows:  "It is concluded that
	 all American AIDS exceeding the normal low incidence of indicator
	 diseases in the general population is the result of recreational and
	 anti-HIV drugs.  Thus the American AIDS epidemicis a subset of the
	 drug epidemic.

I notice the careful use of ``American AIDS'' in the above.  So, how
does Duesberg's theory explain the spread of AIDS elsewhere in the
world?  Or does he carefully avoid that minor issue?  Are the means by
which AIDS devlops in the US different from elsewhere?  Perspiring
minds want to know!

   The whole medical/scientific/political/media establishment on one side,  Prof.
                                ^^^^^^^^^ You mean, like Reagan and
Bush, the ``who gives a fuck'' twins?  By the way, given that there
are political forces (who claim to represent the majority, ``family
values'', ``kinder, kirche, kultur'' (whoops!)), who would just love
the idea that all AIDS victims are really nothing but degenerates
(remember those televangelists saying ``AIDS is the wrath of God''?),
the idea that this is, tout court, a heretical, rather than a
serviceable idea, is either naive, or, to use Big Daddy's term, smells
powerfully of mendacity.

   Duesberg on the other.

Yes, yes, yes.  Nobody would find Duesberg's idea politically useful.
Certainly not _The American Spectator_, for example, nor _The National
Review_, nor George Bush, nor David Duke, nor Pat Buchanan, nor The
John Birch Society, nor the Republican Party.  Yes, there is nobody
who would finds Duesberg's ideas useful.

			   Definitely a heretic

Yes, absolutely!  All alone, with no defenders.  In fact, he can't
even get right-wing journals to mention his name.

						but who is right?

Who, indeed?  I'm going to be looking for the answers in _The Weekly
World News_, myself.

-30-
Bob

``I quote R. Emmett Tyrell, editor of the _American Spectator_ and a
man whose prose style runs from perfervid to frothing-at-the-mouth.''
	--- Molly Ivins