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- Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!news.bbn.com!ingria
- From: ingria@bbn.com (Bob Ingria)
- Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
- Subject: Re: Cause of AIDS
- Date: 20 Aug 1992 17:42:22 GMT
- Lines: 66
- Distribution: world,local
- Message-ID: <l97mbuINN4fm@news.bbn.com>
- References: <1992Aug18.021709.2312@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> <1992Aug18.052013.27077@uniwa.uwa.edu.au> <105@newave.mn.org> <1992Aug20.165251.29875@newsgate.sps.mot.com>
- Reply-To: ingria@BBN.COM
- NNTP-Posting-Host: bbn.com
- 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
-