PUBLISHERS PREFACE:
As one reviewer said, "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."
The book you are about to read has been a long time in coming. Why?
It is at once enormously controversial and impeccably documented. It comes
from a scientist and writer of great ability and courage. It will cause,
we believe, a firestorm of yet undetermined proportions in both the scientific
and lay communities. And it is, I think I am safe in saying, about the
most difficult book that the Regnery Company has published in nearly 50
years in the business.
If Duesberg is right in what he says about AIDS, and we think he is,
he documents one of the great science scandals of the century. AIDS is
the first political disease, the disease that consumes more government
research money, more press time, and indeed probably more heartache-much
of it unnecessary-than any other. Duesberg tells us why.
Regnery is the third publisher to have contracted to publish Inventing
the AIDS Virus. Addison Wesley initially announced the book in 1993. St.
Martin's signed it in January 1994 and subsequently assigned its contract
to us in January 1995. We announced it, initially, in the fall of 1995
and finally published it in February 1996.
Bryan Ellison, Duesberg's former research assistant and original co-author,
became disenchanted with Duesberg's and his publisher's insistence on careful
documentation and self-published his own version under the title Why We
Will Never Win the War on AIDS in 1994. We sued Ellison for breach of contract
and copyright violation and, after a two-week federal court jury trial,
were awarded a six-figure verdict and an injunction against Ellison's edition.
Inventing the AIDS Virus has been edited by at least five editors, has
been agonized over by the publishers of three major publishing firms, and
concurrently praised and damned by countless critics.
We anticipate that the prepublication controversy may be just a precursor
of what is to follow. In our tradition of presenting the public provocative
books, we are proud to be Peter Duesberg's publisher.*