http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_371.html
I hadn’t heard of either of these two theories before (other than the suspicion among some in the black community that the CIA cooked up AIDS as a weapon against them). I remember criticism of South African Thabo Mbeki a few years ago for his views on AIDS - was he in the camp of either of the scientists about whom Cecil wrote?
I remember Duesberg as a guest speaker at my Anthropology of AIDS course when I was a student at Berkeley in about 1992. He was a good speaker and quite earnest. I didn’t buy his theory (not that I was qualified to evaluate it, then or now), but he was obviously a reputable scientist testing a genuine hypothesis. I remember it particularly because I was just beginning to be aware that unpopular research doesn’t get the same kind of funding as less challenging theories, and he was a working example of how impartial science wasn’t. In theory, good research on an incorrect premise would quickly disprove it and settle the question, but it seemed like AIDS researchers would rather just not discuss the possibility.
The one thing that bothers me about Duesberg: He literally wrote the book on retrovirus, & sometimes it seems like he thinks he knows everything about them. I read a quote of his where he said, (paraphrased) “It’s just a harmless retrovirus; it can’t do that!” & I thought, well, what if a retrovirus can do that, & he just doesn’t want to admit that he was wrong, that his book missed something?
But I’m glad he’s out there, working on it. It does appear that there is much more to AIDS than the sensationalized “Catch HIV & die!” that the media sold. If his work can show what else is going on, then he can still do some good.
Mbeki’s beliefs about HIV are closer to Duesberg’s.
— Gos
If you have a few minutes, you might want to read the Durbin Declaration, which was signed by 5000 scientists, including 11 Nobel laureates: The Durban Declaration | Nature
It has loads of sources and links to back it up, and it states:
“HIV causes AIDS. It is unfortunate that a few vocal people continue to deny the evidence. This position will cost countless lives.”
The Durbin declaration was drawn up in response to Mbeki’s position, which is derived from Duesberg’s.
The UK’s Health Protection Agency also wrote this at the time:
“The literature demonstrating the link between HIV and serious disease or death is extensive, but to give just one example, the joint Ugandan-UK (Medical Research Council) programme has worked for over a decade with the population-based Masaka natural history cohort. In their study they found that the death rate in HIV infected adults over five years of monitoring was more than ten times higher than in the uninfected.” (http://www.hpa.org.uk/hpa/news/phls_archive/press_releases/2000/000505.htm)
That’s a 10x mortality increase in people whose only distinguishing characteristic is infection by a “harmless retrovirus.”
For well off westerners the “controversy” about HIV/AIDS might seem like an interesting thing to pontificate about when having casual, ill-informed discussions about “scientific freedom,” but in Africa it’s killing people dead. Being skeptical is important but being “a skeptic” regardless of the subject or evidence is as lame as being indiscriminately credulous. Cecil has downplayed the level of consensus on HIV/AIDS - which is very high - and played up the controversy. When millions of people’s lives are at stake, this sort of thing stops being cute and becomes ethically treacherous. Cecil should clarify his post and apologize.
Yes and no… Health organizations absolutely have a responsibility to trust the best-accepted scientific consensus, and to plan policies accordingly. But meanwhile, scientists also have a responsibility to question that same consensus. In fact, that’s the only way a scientific consensus is ever formed in the first place, by questioning the previous consensus.
Mind you, I don’t think that Duesberg is correct, any more than I think that Milgrom’s modifications to gravity are correct, nor that Hoyle’s panspermia hypothesis was correct. But this does not mean that these individuals should be silenced. Every so often, a scientist will depart from the mainstream, and pursue a hypothesis which almost all other scientists are confident is wrong, but turns out to be right. Such occurances are rare, but it is by them that science advances.
Frankly, I can’t imagine anyone being insane enough to cook up and unleash a biowar agent without having a cure or at least a vaccine for it first. That’s why I don’t give these woo woo theories the time of day.
I certainly wasn’t suggesting silencing anyone! But I do believe this debate should be portrayed as accurately as the debates over gravity, evolution, and the earth’s roundness. But they’re often not, and I think it’s because this one has a cultural element to it.
Some of the Duesbergers seem to like the idea that pharmaceutical companies and grant-hungry researchers are using pro-gay political correctness and anti-African prejudice to put up a smokescreen to hide the real causes of AIDS - namely deviant lifestyle and/or poverty. It seems risqué and defiantly un-PC to believe this, and if you’re an African man it gives you a justification to not put on a rubber. These are the reasons why the Duesberg theory has gotten more traction than the panspermia hypothesis or any other obscure fringe theory you can think of.
Again, I am NOT suggesting scientists should refrain from questioning things because they’re un-PC, or even because doing so might create a risk to public health. I am asserting that the reasons this theory has gotten as much traction as it has amongst non-scientists have to do with cultural forces, and that these forces align the “dissenters” much more closely with conventional conspiracy theories than with any kind of scientists.
Cecil’s assertion that “over a hundred” scientists have called for re-examination of the connection by joining the “Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis” not only suggests that there’s meaningful scientific debate about it (by offering no counterbalancing number), but leaves the word “hypothesis” unexamined. It’s a THEORY that’s been tested and verified by observing millions of deaths. It’s as unfalsified as evolution, but you don’t don’t hear Cecil taking the opposite side in that debate. Could it be because questioning AIDS makes you look like a bravely un-PC maverick and questioning evolution just makes you look like a moron?
Cecil created the impression of scientific debate where there is virtually none (in the last paragraph of his post), and so he should at least acknowledge the error and correct his post.
Note the 1993 date.
I understand. But note the dates in the comments on this page!
And of course the date of Mbeki’s comments was 2000, and then there’s the reality that as of 2006 South Africa’s HIV infection rate was still rising due to rampant ignorance and distrust of western medicine.
I don’t know whether the “classic” posts on the home page are chosen by an algorithm at random, or chosen by some ironic hipster who thinks it’s funny to propagate ignorance on a site that’s ostensibly dedicated to eradicating it. But either way there should be a way of contextualizing posts that have become dated. Unlike questions about why the sky’s blue, this sort of thing has consequences.
There’s only so much money available for research. “Unpopular” ideas (a.k.a. bizarre and repeatedly disproven ideas) don’t attract as much research funding because those who provide it want it to do some good, not just satisfy the alt med enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists whose favorite line is “Prove me wrong!”
New concepts do unexpectedly emerge in the face of general skepticism. And the history of science is littered with vast amounts of sludge churned out by cranks. The AIDS denialists will ultimately fall into the latter category.
Yikes! Assume much? Slow up, pardner. The idea isn’t inherently bizarre. A quick look online found plenty of truly bizarre suggestions, such as the idea that AIDS was developed by alien scientists and inflicted on humans as an experiment. Duesberg’s idea also wasn’t “repeatedly disproven” at the time. That’s the whole point: once something has been repeatedly disproven, we can stop pursuing that avenue and move on to others. If Duesberg or anyone else refuses to give up on an idea proven wrong, then they’re an idiot and a poor scientist.
I’m not saying that Duesberg was right, or that ANYONE in 2007 ought to be funding that research. I’m saying that in 1992 he made a good case that he was trying to solve a medical problem and being stymied by a priori conclusions. He was speaking on the campus of U.C. Berkeley, which admittedly has its share of “conspiracy theories and alt med enthusiasts,” but by and large is full of intelligent, science-friendly folks. In any case, it was a medical anthropology class, so we were more interested in the social aspects of the practice of medicine than in the science behind it.
Please don’t get the idea that I support the guy or his research. The professors (Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Paul Rabinow) also made their skepticism plain. The lecture was an object lesson on the way that funding, of crucial importance to science, was often determined by people with a weak grasp of the issues involved, who were quick to paint non-mainstream theories as unworthy of regard. Of course that’s correct in many cases, but the point was to make us think about it.
I’m liking this guy! redwards13, welcome to the SDMB and please consider becoming a member. You made some damn good points.
I agree. Duesberg’s theories about HIV have been disproven. If HIV didn’t cause AIDS, then the current antiretroviral therapies wouldn’t work the way they do.
If you’re gonna reprint a “classic” column, then add an update.