Duesberg hypothesis
Encyclopedia
The Duesberg hypothesis is the claim, associated with University of California, Berkeley
professor Peter Duesberg
, that various non-infectious factors such as recreational and pharmaceutical drug use are the cause of AIDS
, and that HIV
(human immunodeficiency virus) is merely a harmless passenger virus
. The most prominent supporters of this hypothesis are Duesberg himself, biochemist
and vitamin proponent David Rasnick
, and journalist Celia Farber
. The scientific community
considers that Duesberg's arguments are the result of cherry-picking predominantly outdated scientific data and selectively ignoring evidence in favour of HIV's role in AIDS. The scientific consensus
is that the Duesberg hypothesis is incorrect, and that HIV is the cause of AIDS.
between trends in recreational drug use and trends in AIDS cases. He argues that the epidemic of AIDS cases in the 1980s corresponds to a supposed epidemic of recreational drug use in the United States
and Europe during the same time frame.
These claims are not supported by epidemiologic data
. The average yearly increase in opioid-related deaths from 1990-2002 was nearly three times the yearly increase from 1979–1990, with the greatest increase in 2000-2002, yet AIDS cases and deaths fell dramatically during the mid-to-late-1990s. Duesberg's claim that recreational drug use, rather than HIV, was the cause of AIDS has been specifically examined and found to be false. Cohort studies have found that only HIV-positive drug users develop opportunistic infection
s; HIV-negative drug users do not develop such infections, indicating that HIV rather than drug use is the cause of AIDS.
Duesberg has also argued that nitrite inhalants were the cause of the epidemic of Kaposi sarcoma (KS) in gay men. However, this argument has been described as an example of the fallacy
of a statistical confounding effect
; it is now known that a herpesvirus
, potentiated by HIV, is responsible for AIDS-associated KS.
Moreover, in addition to recreational drugs, Duesberg argues that anti-HIV drugs such as zidovudine
(AZT) can cause AIDS. Duesberg's claim that antiviral medication causes AIDS is regarded as disproven by the scientific community. Placebo-controlled studies have found that AZT as a single agent produces modest and short-lived improvements in survival and delays the development of opportunistic infections; it certainly did not cause AIDS, which develops in both treated and untreated study patients. With the subsequent development of protease inhibitor
s and highly active antiretroviral therapy, numerous studies have documented the fact that anti-HIV drugs prevent the development of AIDS and substantially prolong survival, further disproving the claim that these drugs "cause" AIDS.
in 1993, found Duesberg's drug abuse-AIDS hypothesis to have "no basis in fact".
A large prospective study followed a group of 715 homosexual
men in the Vancouver, Canada area; approximately half were HIV-seropositive or became so during the follow-up period, and the remainder were HIV-seronegative. After more than 8 years of follow-up, despite similar rates of drug use, sexual contact, and other supposed risk factors in both groups, only the HIV-positive group suffered from opportunistic infection
s. Similarly, CD4
counts dropped in the patients who were HIV-infected, but remained stable in the HIV-negative patients, in spite of similar rates of risk behavior. The authors concluded that "the risk-AIDS hypothesis... is clearly rejected by our data", and that "...The evidence supports the hypothesis that HIV-1 has an integral role in the CD4 depletion and progressive immune dysfunction that characterise AIDS."
Similarly, the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study
(MACS) and the Women's Interagency HIV Study
(WIHS) — which between them observed more than 8,000 Americans — demonstrated that "...the presence of HIV infection is the only factor that is strongly and consistently associated with the conditions that define AIDS." A 2008 study found that recreational drug use (including marijuana, cocaine
, poppers
and amphetamines) had no effect on CD4
or CD8
T-cell counts, providing further evidence against a role of recreational drugs as a cause of AIDS.
testing, HIV can be demonstrated in virtually all patients with AIDS. Since AIDS is now defined partially by the presence of HIV, Duesberg claims it is impossible by definition to offer evidence that AIDS doesn't require HIV. However, the first definitions of AIDS mentioned no cause and the first AIDS diagnoses were made before HIV was discovered. The addition of HIV positivity to surveillance criteria as an absolutely necessary condition for case reporting occurred only in 1993, after a scientific consensus was established that HIV caused AIDS
Duesberg states that African AIDS cases are "a collection of long-established, indigenous diseases, such as chronic fevers, weight loss, alias “slim disease”, diarrhea and tuberculosis" that result from malnutrition and poor sanitation. African AIDS cases, though, have increased in the last three decades as HIV's prevalence has increased but as malnutrition percentages and poor sanitation have declined in many African regions. In addition, while HIV and AIDS are more prevalent in urban than in rural settings in Africa, malnutrition and poor sanitation are found more commonly in rural than in urban settings.
According to Duesberg, common diseases are easily misdiagnosed as AIDS in Africa because "the diagnosis of African AIDS is arbitrary" and does not include HIV testing. A definition of AIDS agreed upon in 1985 by the World Health Organization
in Bangui
did not require a positive HIV test, but since 1985, many African countries have added positive HIV tests to the Bangui criteria for AIDS or changed their definitions to match those of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. One of the reasons for using more HIV tests despite their expense is that, rather than overestimating AIDS as Duesberg suggests, the Bangui definition alone excluded nearly half of African AIDS patients."
Duesberg notes that diseases associated with AIDS differ between African and Western populations, concluding that the causes of immunodeficiency must be different. Tuberculosis
is much more commonly diagnosed among AIDS patients in Africa than in Western countries, while PCP
conforms to the opposite pattern. Tuberculosis, though, had higher prevalence in Africa than in the West before the spread of HIV. In Africa and the United States, HIV has spurred a similar percentage increase in tuberculosis cases. PCP may be underestimated in Africa: since machinery "required for accurate testing is relatively rare in many resource-poor areas, including large parts of Africa, PCP is likely to be underdiagnosed in Africa. Consistent with this hypothesis, studies that report the highest rates of PCP in Africa are those that use the most advanced diagnostic methods" Duesberg also claims that Kaposi's Sarcoma
is "exclusively diagnosed in male homosexual risk groups using nitrite inhalants and other psychoactive drugs as aphrodisiacs", but the cancer is fairly common among heterosexuals in some parts of Africa, and is found in heterosexuals in the United States as well.
Because reported AIDS cases in Africa and other parts of the developing world include a larger proportion of people who do not belong to Duesberg's preferred risk groups of drug addicts and male homosexuals, Duesberg writes on his website that "There are no risk groups in Africa, like drug addicts and homosexuals," However, many studies have addressed the issue of risk groups in Africa and concluded that the risk of AIDS is not equally distributed. In addition, AIDS in Africa largely kills sexually active working-age adults.
Duesberg also rejects the involvement of retroviruses and other viruses in cancer
. To him, virus-associated cancers are "freak accidents of nature" that do not warrant research programs such as the War on Cancer
. Duesberg rejects a role in cancer for numerous viruses, including leukemia
viruses, Epstein-Barr Virus
, Human Papilloma Virus, Hepatitis B, Feline Leukemia Virus
, and Human T-lymphotropic virus
.
Duesberg claims that the supposedly innocuous nature of all retroviruses is supported by what he considers to be their normal mode of proliferation: infection from mother to child in utero. Duesberg does not suggest that HIV is an endogenous retrovirus
, a virus integrated into the germ line and genetically heritable:
in the scientific community
is that the Duesberg hypothesis has been refuted by a large and growing mass of evidence showing that HIV causes AIDS, that the amount of virus in the blood
correlates with disease progression, that a plausible mechanism for HIV's action has been proposed, and that anti-HIV medication decreases mortality
and opportunistic infection
in people with AIDS.
In the December 9, 1994 issue of Science
(Vol. 266, No. 5191), Duesberg's methods and claims were evaluated in a group of articles. The authors concluded that:
) in 1987, and people in developing countries today where very few individuals have access to these medications.
The NIAID reports that, "In the mid-1980s, clinical trials enrolling patients with AIDS found that AZT given as single-drug therapy conferred a modest survival advantage compared to placebo. Among HIV-infected patients who had not yet developed AIDS, placebo-controlled trials found that AZT given as single-drug therapy delayed, for a year or two, the onset of AIDS-related illnesses. Significantly, long-term follow-up of these trials did not show a prolonged benefit of AZT, but also did not indicate that the drug increased disease progression or mortality. The lack of excess AIDS cases and death in the AZT arms of these placebo-controlled trials effectively counters the argument that AZT causes AIDS. Subsequent clinical trials found that patients receiving two-drug combinations had up to 50 percent improvements in time to progression to AIDS and in survival when compared to people receiving single-drug therapy. In more recent years, three-drug combination therapies have produced another 50 to 80 percent improvement in progression to AIDS and in survival when compared to two-drug regimens in clinical trials." "Use of potent anti-HIV combination therapies has contributed to dramatic reductions in the incidence of AIDS and AIDS-related deaths in populations where these drugs are widely available, an effect which clearly would not be seen if antiretroviral drugs caused AIDS."
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
professor Peter Duesberg
Peter Duesberg
Peter H. Duesberg is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley...
, that various non-infectious factors such as recreational and pharmaceutical drug use are the cause of AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
, and that HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
(human immunodeficiency virus) is merely a harmless passenger virus
Passenger virus
A passenger virus is a virus that is frequently found in samples from diseased tissue, such as tumours, but does not contribute to causing the disease.-Experimental demonstration of passenger status:Proving that a virus has no causative role can be difficult...
. The most prominent supporters of this hypothesis are Duesberg himself, biochemist
Biochemist
Biochemists are scientists who are trained in biochemistry. Typical biochemists study chemical processes and chemical transformations in living organisms. The prefix of "bio" in "biochemist" can be understood as a fusion of "biological chemist."-Role:...
and vitamin proponent David Rasnick
David Rasnick
David Rasnick is a chemist and biologist known for his work in the area of HIV/AIDS denial.-Education and views:David Rasnick received a Ph.D. in chemistry from Georgia Tech in 1978. In a 1998 interview, Rasnick stated that he had studied proteases and their inhibitors for twenty years...
, and journalist Celia Farber
Celia Farber
Celia Ingrid Farber is an American print journalist and author, best known for her part in the campaign which denies that AIDS is an infectious disease...
. The scientific community
Scientific community
The scientific community consists of the total body of scientists, its relationships and interactions. It is normally divided into "sub-communities" each working on a particular field within science. Objectivity is expected to be achieved by the scientific method...
considers that Duesberg's arguments are the result of cherry-picking predominantly outdated scientific data and selectively ignoring evidence in favour of HIV's role in AIDS. The scientific consensus
Scientific consensus
Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study. Consensus implies general agreement, though not necessarily unanimity. Scientific consensus is not by itself a scientific argument, and it is not part of the...
is that the Duesberg hypothesis is incorrect, and that HIV is the cause of AIDS.
Role of legal and illegal drug use
Duesberg argues that there is a statistical correlationCorrelation
In statistics, dependence refers to any statistical relationship between two random variables or two sets of data. Correlation refers to any of a broad class of statistical relationships involving dependence....
between trends in recreational drug use and trends in AIDS cases. He argues that the epidemic of AIDS cases in the 1980s corresponds to a supposed epidemic of recreational drug use in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Europe during the same time frame.
These claims are not supported by epidemiologic data
Epidemiology
Epidemiology is the study of health-event, health-characteristic, or health-determinant patterns in a population. It is the cornerstone method of public health research, and helps inform policy decisions and evidence-based medicine by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive...
. The average yearly increase in opioid-related deaths from 1990-2002 was nearly three times the yearly increase from 1979–1990, with the greatest increase in 2000-2002, yet AIDS cases and deaths fell dramatically during the mid-to-late-1990s. Duesberg's claim that recreational drug use, rather than HIV, was the cause of AIDS has been specifically examined and found to be false. Cohort studies have found that only HIV-positive drug users develop opportunistic infection
Opportunistic infection
An opportunistic infection is an infection caused by pathogens, particularly opportunistic pathogens—those that take advantage of certain situations—such as bacterial, viral, fungal or protozoan infections that usually do not cause disease in a healthy host, one with a healthy immune system...
s; HIV-negative drug users do not develop such infections, indicating that HIV rather than drug use is the cause of AIDS.
Duesberg has also argued that nitrite inhalants were the cause of the epidemic of Kaposi sarcoma (KS) in gay men. However, this argument has been described as an example of the fallacy
Fallacy
In logic and rhetoric, a fallacy is usually an incorrect argumentation in reasoning resulting in a misconception or presumption. By accident or design, fallacies may exploit emotional triggers in the listener or interlocutor , or take advantage of social relationships between people...
of a statistical confounding effect
Lurking variable
In statistics, a confounding variable is an extraneous variable in a statistical model that correlates with both the dependent variable and the independent variable...
; it is now known that a herpesvirus
Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus
Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus is one of seven currently known human cancer viruses, or oncoviruses. It is also the eighth human herpesvirus; its formal name according to the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses is HHV-8. Like other herpesviruses, its informal name is used...
, potentiated by HIV, is responsible for AIDS-associated KS.
Moreover, in addition to recreational drugs, Duesberg argues that anti-HIV drugs such as zidovudine
Zidovudine
Zidovudine or azidothymidine is a nucleoside analog reverse-transcriptase inhibitor , a type of antiretroviral drug used for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. It is an analog of thymidine....
(AZT) can cause AIDS. Duesberg's claim that antiviral medication causes AIDS is regarded as disproven by the scientific community. Placebo-controlled studies have found that AZT as a single agent produces modest and short-lived improvements in survival and delays the development of opportunistic infections; it certainly did not cause AIDS, which develops in both treated and untreated study patients. With the subsequent development of protease inhibitor
Protease inhibitor (pharmacology)
Protease inhibitors are a class of drugs used to treat or prevent infection by viruses, including HIV and Hepatitis C. PIs prevent viral replication by inhibiting the activity of proteases, e.g.HIV-1 protease, enzymes used by the viruses to cleave nascent proteins for final assembly of new...
s and highly active antiretroviral therapy, numerous studies have documented the fact that anti-HIV drugs prevent the development of AIDS and substantially prolong survival, further disproving the claim that these drugs "cause" AIDS.
Scientific study and rejection of Duesberg's risk-AIDS hypothesis
Several studies have specifically addressed Duesberg's claim that recreational drug abuse or sexual promiscuity were responsible for the manifestations of AIDS. An early study of his claims, published in NatureNature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general...
in 1993, found Duesberg's drug abuse-AIDS hypothesis to have "no basis in fact".
A large prospective study followed a group of 715 homosexual
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
men in the Vancouver, Canada area; approximately half were HIV-seropositive or became so during the follow-up period, and the remainder were HIV-seronegative. After more than 8 years of follow-up, despite similar rates of drug use, sexual contact, and other supposed risk factors in both groups, only the HIV-positive group suffered from opportunistic infection
Opportunistic infection
An opportunistic infection is an infection caused by pathogens, particularly opportunistic pathogens—those that take advantage of certain situations—such as bacterial, viral, fungal or protozoan infections that usually do not cause disease in a healthy host, one with a healthy immune system...
s. Similarly, CD4
CD4
CD4 is a glycoprotein expressed on the surface of T helper cells, monocytes, macrophages, and dendritic cells. It was discovered in the late 1970s and was originally known as leu-3 and T4 before being named CD4 in 1984...
counts dropped in the patients who were HIV-infected, but remained stable in the HIV-negative patients, in spite of similar rates of risk behavior. The authors concluded that "the risk-AIDS hypothesis... is clearly rejected by our data", and that "...The evidence supports the hypothesis that HIV-1 has an integral role in the CD4 depletion and progressive immune dysfunction that characterise AIDS."
Similarly, the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study
Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study
The Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study is an ongoing clinical study involving over 6,000 men infected with HIV. The study, a program of the Division of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, has been ongoing for over 25 years and has resulted in over 1,000 scientific publications....
(MACS) and the Women's Interagency HIV Study
Women's Interagency HIV Study
The Women's Interagency HIV Study is a longitudinal, observational cohort study of women infected with and at risk for HIV infection in the United States.-Funding:...
(WIHS) — which between them observed more than 8,000 Americans — demonstrated that "...the presence of HIV infection is the only factor that is strongly and consistently associated with the conditions that define AIDS." A 2008 study found that recreational drug use (including marijuana, cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
, poppers
Poppers
Poppers is a slang term for various alkyl nitrites inhaled for recreational purposes, particularly isopropyl nitrite and isobutyl nitrite , and now more rarely, butyl nitrite and amyl nitrite...
and amphetamines) had no effect on CD4
CD4
CD4 is a glycoprotein expressed on the surface of T helper cells, monocytes, macrophages, and dendritic cells. It was discovered in the late 1970s and was originally known as leu-3 and T4 before being named CD4 in 1984...
or CD8
CD8
CD8 is a transmembrane glycoprotein that serves as a co-receptor for the T cell receptor . Like the TCR, CD8 binds to a major histocompatibility complex molecule, but is specific for the class I MHC protein. There are two isoforms of the protein, alpha and beta, each encoded by a different gene...
T-cell counts, providing further evidence against a role of recreational drugs as a cause of AIDS.
Current AIDS definitions
Duesberg argued in 1989 that a significant number of AIDS victims had died without proof of HIV infection. However, with the use of modern culture techniques and polymerase chain reactionPolymerase chain reaction
The polymerase chain reaction is a scientific technique in molecular biology to amplify a single or a few copies of a piece of DNA across several orders of magnitude, generating thousands to millions of copies of a particular DNA sequence....
testing, HIV can be demonstrated in virtually all patients with AIDS. Since AIDS is now defined partially by the presence of HIV, Duesberg claims it is impossible by definition to offer evidence that AIDS doesn't require HIV. However, the first definitions of AIDS mentioned no cause and the first AIDS diagnoses were made before HIV was discovered. The addition of HIV positivity to surveillance criteria as an absolutely necessary condition for case reporting occurred only in 1993, after a scientific consensus was established that HIV caused AIDS
AIDS in Africa
According to the Duesberg hypothesis, AIDS is not found in Africa. What Duesberg calls "the myth of an African AIDS epidemic," among people" exists for several reasons, including:- The need, according to Duesberg, of the CDC, the WHO, and other health organizations to justify their existences, resulting in their "manufacturing contagious plagues out of noninfectious medical conditions."
- Media sensationalism, with stories that "helped shape the Western impression of an AIDS problem out of control," resulting in high levels of funding.
- Willing participation in deception by local doctors who wish to take advantage of this aid money: "African doctors themselves participate in building the myth of the AIDS pandemic."
- Confusion or incompetence on the part of African doctors: "Many common Third World diseases are confused with AIDS even if they are not part of its official definition."
Duesberg states that African AIDS cases are "a collection of long-established, indigenous diseases, such as chronic fevers, weight loss, alias “slim disease”, diarrhea and tuberculosis" that result from malnutrition and poor sanitation. African AIDS cases, though, have increased in the last three decades as HIV's prevalence has increased but as malnutrition percentages and poor sanitation have declined in many African regions. In addition, while HIV and AIDS are more prevalent in urban than in rural settings in Africa, malnutrition and poor sanitation are found more commonly in rural than in urban settings.
According to Duesberg, common diseases are easily misdiagnosed as AIDS in Africa because "the diagnosis of African AIDS is arbitrary" and does not include HIV testing. A definition of AIDS agreed upon in 1985 by the World Health Organization
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...
in Bangui
Bangui
-Law and government:Bangui is an autonomous commune of the Central African Republic. With an area of 67 km², it is by far the smallest high-level administrative division of the CAR in area but the highest in population...
did not require a positive HIV test, but since 1985, many African countries have added positive HIV tests to the Bangui criteria for AIDS or changed their definitions to match those of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. One of the reasons for using more HIV tests despite their expense is that, rather than overestimating AIDS as Duesberg suggests, the Bangui definition alone excluded nearly half of African AIDS patients."
Duesberg notes that diseases associated with AIDS differ between African and Western populations, concluding that the causes of immunodeficiency must be different. Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
is much more commonly diagnosed among AIDS patients in Africa than in Western countries, while PCP
Pneumocystis pneumonia
Pneumocystis pneumonia or pneumocystosis is a form of pneumonia, caused by the yeast-like fungus Pneumocystis jirovecii...
conforms to the opposite pattern. Tuberculosis, though, had higher prevalence in Africa than in the West before the spread of HIV. In Africa and the United States, HIV has spurred a similar percentage increase in tuberculosis cases. PCP may be underestimated in Africa: since machinery "required for accurate testing is relatively rare in many resource-poor areas, including large parts of Africa, PCP is likely to be underdiagnosed in Africa. Consistent with this hypothesis, studies that report the highest rates of PCP in Africa are those that use the most advanced diagnostic methods" Duesberg also claims that Kaposi's Sarcoma
Kaposi's sarcoma
Kaposi's sarcoma is a tumor caused by Human herpesvirus 8 , also known as Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus . It was originally described by Moritz Kaposi , a Hungarian dermatologist practicing at the University of Vienna in 1872. It became more widely known as one of the AIDS defining...
is "exclusively diagnosed in male homosexual risk groups using nitrite inhalants and other psychoactive drugs as aphrodisiacs", but the cancer is fairly common among heterosexuals in some parts of Africa, and is found in heterosexuals in the United States as well.
Because reported AIDS cases in Africa and other parts of the developing world include a larger proportion of people who do not belong to Duesberg's preferred risk groups of drug addicts and male homosexuals, Duesberg writes on his website that "There are no risk groups in Africa, like drug addicts and homosexuals," However, many studies have addressed the issue of risk groups in Africa and concluded that the risk of AIDS is not equally distributed. In addition, AIDS in Africa largely kills sexually active working-age adults.
Duesberg claims that retroviruses like HIV must be harmless to survive
Peter Duesberg argues that retroviruses like HIV must be harmless to survive: they do not kill cells and they do not cause cancer, he maintains. Duesberg writes, "retroviruses do not kill cells because they depend on viable cells for the replication of their RNA from viral DNA integrated into cellular DNA." Duesberg elsewhere states that "the typical virus reproduces by entering a living cell and commandeering the cell's resources in order to make new virus particles, a process that ends with the disintegration of the dead cell".Duesberg also rejects the involvement of retroviruses and other viruses in cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
. To him, virus-associated cancers are "freak accidents of nature" that do not warrant research programs such as the War on Cancer
War on Cancer
The War on Cancer refers to the effort to find a cure for cancer by increased research to improve the understanding of cancer biology and the development of more effective cancer treatments, such as targeted drug therapies. The aim of such efforts is to eradicate cancer as a major cause of death....
. Duesberg rejects a role in cancer for numerous viruses, including leukemia
Leukemia
Leukemia or leukaemia is a type of cancer of the blood or bone marrow characterized by an abnormal increase of immature white blood cells called "blasts". Leukemia is a broad term covering a spectrum of diseases...
viruses, Epstein-Barr Virus
Epstein-Barr virus
The Epstein–Barr virus , also called human herpesvirus 4 , is a virus of the herpes family and is one of the most common viruses in humans. It is best known as the cause of infectious mononucleosis...
, Human Papilloma Virus, Hepatitis B, Feline Leukemia Virus
Feline leukemia virus
Feline leukemia virus is a retrovirus that infects cats. FeLV can be transmitted between infected cats when the transfer of saliva or nasal secretions is involved. If not defeated by the animal’s immune system, the virus can be lethal...
, and Human T-lymphotropic virus
Human T-lymphotropic virus
Human T-cell Lymphotropic Virus Type 1 , also called the Adult T-cell lymphoma virus type 1, a virus that has been seriously implicated in several kinds of diseases including HTLV-I-associated myelopathy, Strongyloides stercoralis hyper-infection, and a virus cancer link for leukemia...
.
Duesberg claims that the supposedly innocuous nature of all retroviruses is supported by what he considers to be their normal mode of proliferation: infection from mother to child in utero. Duesberg does not suggest that HIV is an endogenous retrovirus
Endogenous retrovirus
Endogenous retroviruses are sequences in the genome thought to be derived from ancient viral infections of germ cells in humans, mammals and other vertebrates; as such their proviruses are passed on to the next generation and now remain in the genome....
, a virus integrated into the germ line and genetically heritable:
Scientific response to the Duesberg hypothesis
The consensusScientific consensus
Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study. Consensus implies general agreement, though not necessarily unanimity. Scientific consensus is not by itself a scientific argument, and it is not part of the...
in the scientific community
Scientific community
The scientific community consists of the total body of scientists, its relationships and interactions. It is normally divided into "sub-communities" each working on a particular field within science. Objectivity is expected to be achieved by the scientific method...
is that the Duesberg hypothesis has been refuted by a large and growing mass of evidence showing that HIV causes AIDS, that the amount of virus in the blood
Viral load
Viral load is a measure of the severity of a viral infection, and can be calculated by estimating the amount of virus in an involved body fluid. For example, it can be given in RNA copies per milliliter of blood plasma...
correlates with disease progression, that a plausible mechanism for HIV's action has been proposed, and that anti-HIV medication decreases mortality
Mortality rate
Mortality rate is a measure of the number of deaths in a population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit time...
and opportunistic infection
Opportunistic infection
An opportunistic infection is an infection caused by pathogens, particularly opportunistic pathogens—those that take advantage of certain situations—such as bacterial, viral, fungal or protozoan infections that usually do not cause disease in a healthy host, one with a healthy immune system...
in people with AIDS.
In the December 9, 1994 issue of Science
Science (journal)
Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....
(Vol. 266, No. 5191), Duesberg's methods and claims were evaluated in a group of articles. The authors concluded that:
- it is abundantly evident that HIV causes disease and death in hemophiliacs, a group generally lacking Duesberg's proposed risk factors.
- HIV fulfills Koch's postulatesKoch's postulatesKoch's postulates are four criteria designed to establish a causal relationship between a causative microbe and a disease. The postulates were formulated by Robert Koch and Friedrich Loeffler in 1884 and refined and published by Koch in 1890...
, which are one set of criteria for demonstrating a causal relationship between a microbe and a disease. (Subsequently, additional data further demonstrated the fulfillment of Koch's postulates.) - the AIDS epidemic in ThailandThailandThailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
cited by Duesberg as confirmation of his hypothesis is in fact evidence of the role of HIV in AIDS. - According to researchers who conducted large-scale studies of AZT, the drug does not cause AIDS. Furthermore, researchers acknowledged that recreational drugs do cause immune abnormalities, though not the type of immunodeficiency seen in AIDS.
Effectiveness of antiretroviral medication
The vast majority of people with AIDS have never received antiretroviral drugs, including those in developed countries prior to the licensure of AZT (zidovudineZidovudine
Zidovudine or azidothymidine is a nucleoside analog reverse-transcriptase inhibitor , a type of antiretroviral drug used for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. It is an analog of thymidine....
) in 1987, and people in developing countries today where very few individuals have access to these medications.
The NIAID reports that, "In the mid-1980s, clinical trials enrolling patients with AIDS found that AZT given as single-drug therapy conferred a modest survival advantage compared to placebo. Among HIV-infected patients who had not yet developed AIDS, placebo-controlled trials found that AZT given as single-drug therapy delayed, for a year or two, the onset of AIDS-related illnesses. Significantly, long-term follow-up of these trials did not show a prolonged benefit of AZT, but also did not indicate that the drug increased disease progression or mortality. The lack of excess AIDS cases and death in the AZT arms of these placebo-controlled trials effectively counters the argument that AZT causes AIDS. Subsequent clinical trials found that patients receiving two-drug combinations had up to 50 percent improvements in time to progression to AIDS and in survival when compared to people receiving single-drug therapy. In more recent years, three-drug combination therapies have produced another 50 to 80 percent improvement in progression to AIDS and in survival when compared to two-drug regimens in clinical trials." "Use of potent anti-HIV combination therapies has contributed to dramatic reductions in the incidence of AIDS and AIDS-related deaths in populations where these drugs are widely available, an effect which clearly would not be seen if antiretroviral drugs caused AIDS."
Opponents claim that nearly all HIV-positive people will develop AIDS
Duesberg claims as support for his idea that many drug-free HIV+ people have not yet developed AIDS; HIV/AIDS scientists note that many drug-free HIV+ people have developed AIDS, and that, in the absence of medical treatment or rare genetic factors postulated to delay disease progression, it is very likely that nearly all HIV+ people will eventually develop AIDS. Scientists also note that HIV-negative drug users do not suffer from immune system collapse.External links
- Peter Duesberg's website
- The Evidence That HIV Causes AIDS: from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious DiseasesNational Institute of Allergy and Infectious DiseasesThe National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health , an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services...
- How HIV Causes AIDS: National Institutes of HealthNational Institutes of HealthThe National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
fact sheet. - Koch's Postulates and the Etiology of AIDS: An Historical Perspective.