Inventing the AIDS Virus by Peter H. Duesberg

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. Ray Olson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
First: Don't be put off by the shrill reactions of other "reviewers" here who don't show any evidence that they have actually read the book. It is not clear to me what could be proven by Duesberg or anyone else injecting themselves with the virus, other than they believe that what they say is true. I don't suppose anyone in the scientific community has sacrificed more to maintain his challenge than has Duesberg. Even a cursory comparison of his career history before and after he became a "heretic" will demonstrate this. I don't think injecting himself with HIV would enhance the already clear and overwhelming evidence of his integrity. (Incidentally, while comparing credentials, check out Robert Gallo's. He started all this, after all. He holds the patent on the stuff their testing our blood with. Evaluate HIS integrity.) Second: Don't be scared by the size of the book. It is well written, accessible, and engaging. The science is patiently explained for the general reader without being patronizing or condescending. This is coming from someone who has a paralyzing fear of scientific writing. I read the first hundred pages the day I got it. Plus, the last 300 pages are appendices which ought, in any case, to add credibility to the argument, since they present the actual evidence upon which the argument is based. Third: Keep an open mind. Duesberg is no quack. He is a member of the elite National Academy of Sciences, and before he became a heretic, was on the Nobel prize fast-track for his discovery of the first cancer gene. Moreover, long before AIDS appeared, Duesberg was an eminently respected retro-virologist. Since the reputed source of "AIDS" is supposed to be precisely one of these strange and rare critters (actually not a critter, since viruses are not living things), who better than someone who has devoted his career to studying them to explain what they do, and what they cannot do? Maybe he's obsessed; maybe that doesn't really matter. This book makes a case that should be answered, not vilified by his peers (if they can; I've searched and searched and found nothing more enlightening by way of counter-argument than the reviewer who immediately precedes me here). Fourth: This book is especially important if you are a person who has tested positive with HIV. The story told here will answer many of your questions, and may lead to some degree of independence. If Duesberg is right (and I think, at least as far as HIV is concerned, he is), then this is very GOOD news for thousands of people who have been infected with what would appear to be a very old and not terribly interesting passenger virus. This is especially true for HIV positive people who have never been sick (except from side effects of the toxic medicines that are currently the protocol of choice among mainstream physicians). Finally: No great scientific innovation in history has resulted from those who were at the mainstream. From Aristotle to Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, Einstein, and forward: all were rejected by their peers, vilified, called quacks and condemned as heretics. Admittedly, that doesn't prove anything about the current debate, but it ought to give one pause before raising the argument that usually goes: "How could so many eminent scientists be wrong?" How indeed. This book probably sheds more light on that mystery than it does on AIDS itself. I gave the book 4 instead of 5 stars because I don't think everything argued here is of equal value. Duesberg's alternative theory what DOES cause AIDS is not as well proven as his case as to what does NOT cause AIDS. Which is not to say that he's not right. But interested readers should also look at the work of Dr. Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopolus and her colleagues of the Perth Group in Australia. Search her name on any search engine and you'll get more than enough. These scientists go farther than Duesberg, suggesting that HIV may not even exist. I respectfully encourage anyone who has come to visit this page to read the first few chapters of this book, starting with the forward by 1993 Nobel Prize winner (chemistry; developer of the polyemerase chain reaction [PCR] protocol, currently the "gold standard" in virus hunting) Kary Mullis. See if you can put it down.