 | At last! This is the book every AIDS-watcher has been awaiting, in which the most prominent and persistent critic of HIV as the cause of AIDS presents his case most exhaustively and popularly. Duesberg, himself a virologist, stoutly maintains that HIV cannot cause AIDS because it fails to meet the rules by which a virus is implicated as disease-causing. He says that the causes of AIDS in First World countries most probably are overuse of toxic drugs--by legal prescription (e.g., AZT) as well as illicit use (e.g., the nitrite inhalants known as poppers that are used to enhance sexual capability)--and multiple and repeated infections with venereal diseases; in the Third World, they are malnutrition and maladies (e.g., tuberculosis) rare in wealthy nations but still prevalent in poor ones as well as, again, substance abuse. Duesberg massively documents and cogently argues these positions but not before laying out the historic and political reasons why most members of his profession and related medical specialists seized on a viral causation for AIDS. Basically, virologists wanted another success like that with polio and, frustrated by complete failure to find viral causes for cancer, took up AIDS as the perfect challenge as well as, once HIV was discovered, a ticket for prolonging their first-class ride on the medical research gravy train. Strong stuff, but Duesberg has never been alone in this analysis or in his scientific arguments. He has never before gathered his case together and presented it to the general public, though, so regard this book as a milestone essential to any collection concerned with AIDS. (A Booklist review) |
Inventing the AIDS Virus by Peter Duesberg, M.D.
