"AIDS" CRITICISM IN EUROPE

By John Lauritsen

New York Native 15 June 1992

The genie is out of the bottle in Europe, and the "AIDS" orthodoxies will never be the same following an "alternate AIDS conference" held in Amsterdam in mid-May. Beginning in April, major articles and an editorial in the The Times and The Sunday Times of London ignited a controversy that brought the small conference into the spotlight of the world's media (except for the American media, which were conspicuously absent). Millions of people are now aware that important scientists, armed with powerful arguments, dispute the official dogma that "AIDS" is a single disease entity caused solely by a retrovirus called the "Human immunodeficiency virus" (HIV).

Pre-Conference Controversy

The opening explosion was an article by Neville Hodgkinson in the 26 April 1992 issue of The Sunday Times, one of the world's most important newspapers. Entitled "Experts mount startling challenge to Aids orthodoxy", the article began on the front page and then continued for another two full pages on the inside. Hodgkinson informed his readers that two of the world's leading authorities on viruses were "about to launch a startling assault on conventional medical thinking about Aids." One was Luc Montagnier, the discoverer of HIV, who now believes that the virus is practically harmless in the absence of co-factors. The other was Peter Duesberg, Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at Berkeley, who thinks HIV is a dud under any circumstances.

Hodgkinson fairly and lucidly presented Duesberg's multi-faceted critique of the HIV-"AIDS" hypothesis, along with the views of other anti-HIV scientists, including Kary Mullis, the inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique; Charles Thomas, a former Harvard professor of biochemistry who heads The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis; Gordon Stewart, Britain's leading epidemiologist; and Harvey Bialy, Research Editor of BioTechnology, who is quoted as saying:

Efforts based on this [HIV] approach had had three results: A vaccine that doesn't exist; AZT, which is iatrogenic genocide; and condom use, which is common sense.

The business community responded in alarm to Hodgkinson's article. A number of business analysts, most of whom requested anonymity, referred to Duesberg's ideas as "nothing new", "extreme", "rather way out", "unwelcome", and so on. Share prices of Wellcome (parent company of Burroughs Wellcome, the manufacturer of AZT) dropped, and a Wellcome spokeswoman referred to the article as "very emotive". (Reuter, 27 April 1992)

On 27 April an article by Science Editor Nigel Hawkes, "Scientists challenge Aids link to HIV", appeared in The Times. The Sunday Times of 3 May contained another Neville Hodgkinson article, "Government to back rebels in Aids research", as well as letters attacking and praising the earlier article. Kenneth Calman, the Chief Medical Officer of the UK, said that the "controversial views" of Peter Duesberg had been "refuted repeatedly by scientists worldwide", a flatly untrue statement for which he offered not a single reference. Calman asserted that although much was unknown about "how HIV attacks the immune system", it was nevertheless the cause of "AIDS", in support of which he referred to a highly flawed American study which claimed to show that ten years after HIV infection, "50% will have developed AIDS."

The Sunday Independent of 10 May contained a thought- provoking article by William Leith, "New theories, old prejudices: Scientists don't like their worlds upset by new theories". Leith dared to make comparisons between the efforts of Peter Duesberg and the members of the Group for the Reappraisal of the HIV-Aids Hypothesis and the struggles encountered by Charles Darwin and Copernicus.

The Times of Monday 11 May contained a sympathetic full-page article on Peter Duesberg, "Cast out for an Aids heresy", written by Charles Bremner, as well as an eloquent editorial, "AIDS and Truth", which likened the hysterical reaction to Duesberg to the "fate of Galileo before the Inquisition." The editorial concludes:

Vested interest should always have a question mark raised over it, not least when it seeks to stamp on the efforts of scientists who sincerely believe otherwise. Aids research, like all scientific discovery, should start not with dogma but with skepticism. It should proceed by applying reason to empirical analysis, in a ceaseless search for probability if not proof. The thesis that HIV is the cause of Aids has been of huge public importance. It remains the conventional wisdom. Researchers must strive to accord the same respect to those who question the thesis as to those who uphold it. They should welcome skeptics with open arms, offer them equal riches, test every thesis in the fire of argument and honestly accept the outcome. (The Times, 11 May 1992)

The "AIDS" Empire began to strike back on 14 May, the first day of the Amsterdam conference. In The Independent appeared an article, "The spreading of a terrible myth", by Steve Connor, who in the past has attacked Duesberg in the pages of The New Scientist. Making a scurrilous mishmash of Duesberg's ideas, Connor portrayed Hodgkinson's article as dangerous because of the effect it might have on "people who are suffering from AIDS and taking anti-HIV drugs." In other words, they might stop taking their AZT.

On the same day letters attacking Duesberg were published in The Times -- from the Government's Chief Medical Officer, Kenneth Calman; John Maddox, Editor of Nature; and Nick Partridge, Chief Executive of Terrence Higgins Trust. None of them offered more than inchoate indignation in support of the HIV-"AIDS" hypothesis -- Calman, for example, chose to argue by appealing to such things as "overwhelming scientific consensus" and "the solid weight of current expert opinion". One wonders how solid the weight would be of yesterday's expert opinion, not to mention tomorrow's.

With all this press coverage in England, censorship still prevailed in the United States. Despite several Reuter and United Press International dispatches, not a word appeared in the American press.

The Amsterdam Conference

The international symposium, "AIDS: A Different View", took place in Amsterdam on the 14th through the 16th of May, in an old church that had once been used by a dissenting Protestant sect escaping persecution. It was made possible through substantial grants from public funds. The goal of the conference was to provide an exchange of ideas, as the first step towards developing a multicausal approach to "AIDS". Conference participants were asked to have respect for ideas different from their own, and to adopt a spirit of questioning.

The world media were there in force, including German and Swiss television; CBC (Canadian) radio; The Times and The Sunday Times; The Lancet and Nature; Der Spiegel; and many independent journalists and film makers, including Coleman Jones of Toronto, Fritz Poppenberg of Berlin, and Joan Shenton and her Meditel team of London. Conference participants came from the United States, Canada, South America, Australia, Africa, and every country in Europe.

Michael Callen

The first day was devoted to presentations of 40 minutes, followed by brief discussion. Michael Callen, the world's best-known Long-Term Survivor, said that he had never accepted the "AIDS virus" theory or the need for anti-retroviral drugs. From his informal studies of other long-term survivors, Callen noted the following characteristics in common: They were feisty, independent thinkers, willing to question their doctors and if necessary fire them; they adopted more healthy ways of living, giving up recreational drugs, stopping smoking, and eating more nutritional food; and they avoided toxic drugs like AZT. Some members of the audience, especially those who adopted a holistic approach to health, were dismayed by the fact that Callen was obviously not well and that he was highly dependent upon medication. At one point Callen held up a plastic sandwich bag filled with capsules, and said that he took 56 pills every day. After ten years of surviving with "AIDS", Callen has now been diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) of the lungs, for which the prognosis is not good.

John Lauritsen

I was the second speaker, and talked about AZT. After mentioning my academic background (social sciences at Harvard) and my professional expertise (survey research), I put forward my view of "AIDS", which I regard as a phoney construct that postulates a single underlying cause for over two dozen old and unrelated diseases. I proposed instead that different risk groups and different individuals may be getting sick in different ways and for different reasons. We should thoroughly investigate all of the health risks that impinge on them.

I described the deadly acute (short-term) toxicities of AZT, which include severe anemia, muscle disease, violent headaches, and damage to the liver, kidneys, and nerves. The chronic (long-term) toxicities of AZT are unknown, but almost certainly will include cancer. I then described the major research used to claim benefits for AZT, asserting that in one way or another the studies were no good. I detailed the shortcomings of the Creagh-Kirk survival study (1); the idiotic Pizzo study (2), which claimed that giving AZT to children boosted their IQs; the inept and inconclusive Volberding study (3), which was the basis of the FDA's approving AZT therapy for healthy, "asymptomatic" HIV-positive individuals; and a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine (4). I then turned my big guns on the Phase II AZT trials, which were the basis for the FDA's precipitous approval of the drug in 1987. After going into the many, appalling forms of cheating that took place and were tolerated during the Phase II trials, I concluded that the trials could only be called fraudulent -- that if the conduct of the AZT investigators did not constitute fraud, the word had no meaning. (5)

Joan McKenna

Joan McKenna of TBM Associates in Berkeley, presented a multifactorial view of "AIDS", which hypothesized that syphilis was a common, underlying factor in the syndrome. She pretty well covered all bases, including often-ignored psychological factors and the role of drugs, both "recreational" and medical. In particular, McKenna stressed the role that overuse of antibiotics played in causing "AIDS" illnesses. Many of the gay men with "AIDS" had been treated for venereal diseases dozens of times in the decade preceding their diagnosis, with increasingly stronger doses of antibiotics. Many of them were on antibiotics continually, taking them prophylactically from open prescriptions that their gay doctors had given them. Pharmaceutical propaganda notwithstanding, antibiotics are not good for the immune system or for the health in general.

McKenna maintained that syphilis is hard to diagnosis in an immune-suppressed individual, and that the common tests are unreliable. Surely, though, it must be possible to present the syphilis-"AIDS" hypothesis in such a way that it could be either verified or falsified. I do not go all the way with the ideas of Karl Popper, but I do think that the syphilis-"AIDS" hypothesis could be tested, and it ought to be.

Luc Montagnier

Much interest was aroused by the appearance at the conference of Luc Montagnier, the man who discovered HIV. Two years earlier, at the international "AIDS" conference in San Francisco, Montagnier had stated that the "AIDS virus" by itself couldn't do much of anything, and required co-factors. He believed that the necessary accomplice might be a mycoplasma, but he also admitted in questioning that the necessary co-factor might be a toxin. More recently Montagnier has spoken of "AIDS" cases without HIV. There was speculation that Montagnier might finally have the guts to admit he'd been wrong -- that HIV was not the cause of "AIDS". This did not happen.

Montagnier back-pedaled and dithered around aimlessly. Although he asserted that HIV was necessary for "AIDS", he did not address a single one of Duesberg's criticisms of the HIV- "AIDS" hypothesis. He asserted that AZT is beneficial -- a possible consequence of his having recently taken a trip with expenses paid by Wellcome. Montagnier has become a millionaire thanks to HIV; he receives $100,000 a year from royalties on the HIV-antibody test. Perhaps honor and honesty are too much to expect from him.

Psycho-neuro-immunology

One of the more interesting panels dealt with the role of psychological factors is causing "AIDS" illnesses. Hansueli Albonico, a medical doctor of Langnau, Switzerland, attacked the dogma that every HIV-positive individual will develop "AIDS". He spoke of "a science of medicine which is more and more inflicted with fear" -- a reprehensible state of affairs, since studies in psycho-neuro-immunology have shown that fear itself can have an injurious effect on the immune system. "In the clutch of "AIDS", fear is so predominant that an HIV-test alone, regardless of its result, can lead to a drop of the T4-lymphocytes." In Albonico's view, overcoming the HIV-dogma is a necessary first step towards a effective medical practice regarding "AIDS": "The narrow-minded monocausal virus-hypothesis of "AIDS" must be overcome in favor of a broader view which takes into consideration the complex individual personality of the patient in his/her relation to the world and environment."

Jeffrey Leiphart of San Diego has been working with PWAs since the beginning of 1982. As a trained health psychologist, he was interested from the start in the role of psycho-social factors in the onset and progression of "AIDS" -- in particular, the role of Sustained Internal Survival Stress (SISS), a "specific form of psychological stress that requires hypothalamic involvement and sustained arousal of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. Leiphart has come to believe that HIV has little or nothing to do with the development of "AIDS", and that the important thing is to control the co- factors.

Recovery from "AIDS"

Two of the panels, "Long-term surviving" and "Non-toxic therapies", discussed how people can keep or regain their health following diagnoses of having "AIDS" or "ARC", or being "HIV- positive". Michael Ellner of HEAL in New York emphasized the importance of liberating such people from the voodoo death-threat that has been directed at them by the medical establishment. He used the analogy of a tribal witch doctor pointing a bone at a victim, who then obediently goes home to die.

Cass Mann of Positively Healthy (PH) in London presented a many-sided approach to health. His organization was founded in 1987 "in order to counter the deathwish philosophy and anti-science agenda encoded by most of the other 'Aids' organizations in the UK." From its inception PH has challenged the "Big Three Myths of 'AIDS'":

The first, that HIV is sufficient and necessary to cause "AIDS"; the second, that AZT, and anti-HIV "treatment" prolongs life or improves survival; the third, that everyone diagnosed with HIV will go on to develop "AIDS". All these myths PH has proven to be lies, as none of our 300-plus members are taking AZT, and the vast majority are completely well and living full, normal and healthy lives.

Mann described how the success of PH "eventually brought down the wrath of the pharmaceutical empires onto our heads, and resulted in a campaign against us of a ferocity, viciousness and assassination unparalleled in the history of any AIDS organization in the world." However, PH survived, stronger than ever, despite a struggle which jeopardized the health of many of their members.

Mann stressed the importance of eliminating harmful things from one's life. Specifically, people who are addicted to drugs, alcohol, or cigarettes must give them up. This is very difficult for someone to do as an individual, but much easier to do in a group. Therefore, PH emphasizes group activity, from stress-reduction exercises, to the preparation of nutritional food, to programs for recovering from substance abuse.

In the panel on "non-toxic therapies", an Amsterdam physician, Joep Lange, maintained that AZT was beneficial, and that the AZT studies were good research. When other members of the panel attempted to confront him on these assertions, the chair intervened to silence them. This outraged a number of members of the audience. One man said that he had not come all the way from Argentina to hear AZT promoted on a panel about non-toxic therapies. "Why can't we have an impartial chair?" he demanded.

The next day Lange and I were scheduled to appear together on a panel on "pharmaceutical research and AIDS". I came prepared for a confrontation, but Lange failed to show up. That evening Lange went on Dutch television to denounce Peter Duesberg as "a lunatic". It was not an accusation he dared to make at the conference.

Dirty tricks against Duesberg

Although Peter Duesberg was undeniably the star of the conference, he was put into situations which made it difficult for him to make his points effectively. The media build-up transformed the nature of the conference. What might have been a small conference, where "AIDS" critics exchanged views with each other, became instead a prime-time controversy. As a result, the "AIDS" Establishment, which might otherwise have been content merely to observe, intervened by engaging in various forms of disruption, disinformation, and dirty tricks. In radio communications, this sort of thing is known as "jamming". It soon became apparent that the "AIDS" Establishment was out, covertly as well as openly, to "get Duesberg".

The trouble began with Duesberg's presentation. After he had spoken for only 30 minutes, the chair told him to wind up quickly, although the speakers preceding him had spoken for at least 40 minutes each. This was a problem, as he had carefully timed his presentation in order to cover the most important points. The chair was adamant in not allowing any more time, and Duesberg sat down in a well-justified huff.

In his presentation Duesberg focussed on the many absurdities of "AIDS" epidemiology, and the contradictions built into the very definition of "AIDS". He showed a slide which stated: "TB + HIV = AIDS" and then, "TB - HIV = TB". His point was that "AIDS" is officially defined as any of over 25 old diseases plus HIV antibodies. Two intravenous drug users might have identical clinical profiles (emaciation and tuberculosis); the one with HIV antibodies would be diagnosed as having "AIDS", with the assumption that HIV alone had caused the illness, whereas the one without HIV antibodies would be diagnosed as having tuberculosis due to drug abuse.

It is a shame that the final ten minutes of Duesberg's presentation were amputated, and that the audience were not allowed to hear his final summary and conclusions. Fortunately, his ideas are in print, and should be studied by anyone seriously interested in the etiology controversy. The great merit of his critique of the HIV-"AIDS" hypothesis is its comprehensiveness. Though Duesberg speaks with great authority in his own specialty, molecular biology, he is also an excellent generalist, and has drawn some of his most powerful arguments from such fields as epidemiology, toxicology, philosophy, and history. His first major article, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concentrated on arguments from molecular biology: that a biochemically inactive microbe, a "profoundly conventional retrovirus", could not cause lethal illness. (6) Then, realizing that the HIV advocates were increasingly relying upon epidemiology (which consists largely of survey research conducted by people with no professional experience in survey research), Duesberg confronted them on their home territory with an article refuting the HIV-"AIDS" hypothesis from the standpoint of epidemiology. (7) Finally, coming to the conclusion that drugs, both medical and recreational, were the most important causes of "AIDS" illnesses, he wrote an article entitled, "The role of drugs in the origin of AIDS". (8)

Although "AIDS: A Different View" was promoted as a conference for "people which have views about "AIDS", different from what is generally accepted by scientists, the media, and the public", spokesmen for the "AIDS" Establishment came into the program at the last moment. Instead of providing a forum for those who questioned the prevailing "AIDS" verities to present their ideas and share their experiences as cogently as possible, the conference turned into an unseemly confrontation with upholders of the HIV-"AIDS" hypothesis. The HIV advocates, all from Amsterdam, had little "respect for ideas different from their own"; they went for the jugular. This is especially ironical, considering that "AIDS" critics have been silenced at conferences, time and time again, when we attempted to criticize the prevailing "AIDS" dogmas during discussion periods.

Roel Coutinho, an epidemiologist, and Frank Miedema, an immunologist, presented a slide talk on research they had conducted, which allegedly proved that "HIV IS THE CAUSE OF AIDS" (their last slide). Their slides were impressive, but so what? Anyone these days with a good computer graphics program can make pretty slides. Their data had a too-good-to-be-true quality. Everyone with HIV developed "AIDS", or at least immunological problems. No one without HIV became sick. Healthy people became HIV-positive, and immediately their immune systems started going downhill. And so on. Members of the audience expressed skepticism during the discussion period -- for one thing, numerous studies have shown that a decline in immune function commences well before a person becomes HIV-positive.

An evening panel on "Virology and Epidemiology" turned out to be a setup against Duesberg. Of the nine panelists, only three were not HIV-believers: Peter Duesberg, Gordon Stewart, and A. Hssig from Switzerland, one of the world's leading authorities on all aspects of blood transfusions. Unfortunately both Stewart and Hssig are elderly; although their comments were perceptive, they were not suited for the verbal slugfest that ensued, and Duesberg was left to face a lynch mob pretty much on his own. The assault was led by a gang of three: Coutinho and Miedema, joined by virologist Jaap Goudsmit, a research collaborator of theirs. All kinds of insults and abuse were hurled upon Duesberg, who, when he tried to reply, would be interrupted in mid-sentence and told to let others speak. Both Goudsmit and Miedema laughed and made faces at Duesberg. Coutinho repeatedly told Duesberg he was wrong and didn't know what he was talking about, because he hadn't paid attention to "the data we presented", meaning his and Miedema's slide talk. The whole thing was a farce, and members of the audience became quite angry at the way Duesberg was treated. In the discussion period, Frank Buianouckas, a Professor of Mathematics from New York, said to Goudsmit: "Why should anyone believe what you say? How do we know it's not fraud?" The meaning of this comment only because clear the next day, when I received a copy of an article from Science, which disclosed that the year before, investigators in Amsterdam had uncovered fraud on the part of Goudsmit.

The article by Felix Eijgenraam, "Dutch AIDS Researchers Feel Heat of Publicity" (9), described how Goudsmit and a collaborator, Henk Buck, had grabbed much media attention in 1990 on the basis of a paper they had published in Science, claiming to have developed a way to block HIV. However, colleagues at the University of Amsterdam became skeptical, and a series of investigations were initiated. Eventually four independent investigations showed that Goudsmit and Buck had cheated and lied repeatedly -- that there was no merit whatever to their research -- that they had committed fraud. Although the university administered only a slap on the wrist to Goudsmit, his reputation from that time forth should have been that of a fraudster, a man unfit to be in the company of honest scientists. I find I feel strongly about this. Scientists ought to have an honor code, similar to that of West Point cadets: "A scientist will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do." It is regrettable that the panel chair allowed an honest and courageous scientist like Duesberg to be insulted and abused by people like Goudsmit, Miedema, and Coutinho.

The final attack on Duesberg came on the third day, towards the end of the final panel, on "Science and AIDS". Copies were circulated of a press release on official conference letterhead, which charged that Duesberg's critique of risk- reduction guidelines "is appalling and may kill people." (See Box A.) Joan Shenton of Meditel and I immediately announced that we would issue a second press release, defending Peter Duesberg's right to free speech. This we did, and the conference organizers agreed that since the first had been erroneously put on official conference letterhead, ours ought to be also. (See Box B.) Not only did many people sign ours, but some of the signers of the first press release retracted: Martien Brands, a conference organizer, apologized publicly; Joseph Sonnabend apologized privately; Eleni Eleopolis, near tears, said that the press release was not the statement that had been read to her, and that she "had been used"; Jeffrey Leiphart signed our press release, condemning the first press release, which he had also signed; Michael Callen said he had typed the first press release on conference letterhead unwittingly, because he had "AIDS".

"Safe sex" and other divisive issues

There seemed to be three main areas of contention at the conference: the role of HIV, whether or not "AIDS" is a single disease entity, and risk- reduction guidelines.

With regard to HIV, the ranks of believers in the orthodox position, that HIV alone causes "AIDS", seem to be dwindling. There remain the revisionists, who believe that HIV requires co-factors in order to work in mysterious ways, its evils to perform, and the revolutionists, who believe that HIV is harmless under any circumstances. No doubt much discussion and time will be necessary before the issue is resolved. The revisionists have every right to formulate their hypotheses, no matter how silly, though I question whether they should be given hundreds of millions of dollars a year in order to do so. The time has already come for the Public Health Service to admit that they were wrong, that the HIV-"AIDS" hypothesis was the greatest blunder in medical history. It's like the kid who batted a ball through the neighbor's window -- the sooner he tells his parents, the better it will be.

There ought to be room for disagreement on the question of whether or not "AIDS" is a single disease entity. To me it is self-evident on the basis of the syndrome's epidemiology that it is not, though others have a right to their opinion.

The really prickly question concerns "safer sex" and risk-reduction guidelines. Emotions run very high here, and one could no more persuade the vast army of "AIDS educators" to abandon their faith in condoms, than one could persuade Transylvanian peasants to abandon their crucifixes and garlic flowers in the shadow of Dracula's castle.

However, as a freethinker, I believe that every topic, including "safer sex", should be open to discussion. As a member in 1983 of the New York Safer Sex Committee, which formulated the world's first comprehensive safer sex guidelines, I feel qualified to speak on the issue. According to Peter Duesberg, there is no evidence that the use of condoms has prevented even a single case of "AIDS". For expressing this view, he was called "criminally irresponsible" by Kenneth Calman, the Chief Medical Officer of the United Kingdom. But rational and comprehensive risk-reduction guidelines ought to cover more than just "safer sex". Drugs, for example. One could just as well accuse Calman of being criminally irresponsible for not having spoken out on the dangers of poppers (nitrite inhalants), which are sold legally in England right now. The British "AIDS" organizations and health services have not issued warnings that drug abuse can lead to "AIDS" -- on the contrary, they have disseminated risk- reduction guidelines that encourage drug abuse. Intravenous drug users have been told to use clean needles, which clearly sends out the message that the drugs themselves are safe.

It will be impossible to issue definitive risk- reduction guidelines until we know exactly what "AIDS" is and what its causes are. Until then, a much better case can be made for warning against drugs than for warning against sex.

Summing up

This conference was the first to challenge the prevailing "AIDS" orthodoxies on etiology and treatment, and as such represented a giant step forward. All was not sweetness and light, but then why should it have been? The rude and unwelcome intrusion of the "AIDS" Establishment into the conference backfired, on the whole, and views were exchanged and networks formed in spite of it. The conference organizers did an excellent job of putting it all together, and we owe them a debt of gratitude. Thank you, Jan van der Tooren, Robert Laarhoven, Martien Brands, Thomas Erdtsieck, and Maria-Christa Wenneker.

"AIDS" critics in Berlin

I received a call in Amsterdam from Kawi Schneider, one of the leading "AIDS" dissidents in Germany, inviting me to spend a few days in Berlin before returning to New York from Paris. I accepted, and spent several enjoyable and productive days in Berlin. Kawi Schneider and his colleague, Peter Schmidt, are independent producers of programs for Berlin's Offene Kanal (Open Channel) cable television station, whose distinguishing feature is that it is opposed to censorship in any form. There is no counterpart in the United States, which, at least regarding "AIDS", may be the most censored country in the world. Schneider and Schmidt have produced over thirteen different programs on "AIDS", all challenging the prevailing orthodoxies, with over 130 separate transmissions.

Schneider is a school teacher who has been fired from his job because he refused to agree to abide by a gag order that had been imposed on him by his superiors. He had been ordered not to discuss the topic of "AIDS" with any of his pupils. Schneider replied that if his pupils had seen him on television, and had questions to ask, then he would answer their questions, and that this was a basic question of free speech on which he would not compromise.

With Peter Schmidt doing the production, and Kawi Schneider the interviewing, I was on a one-hour live program together with Peter Rasch, the man who founded East Germany's first independent gay liberation group. It went well, and comments afterwards were favorable (except for one man who called up to say, "All gays should be killed", which was not really a criticism of what we had said on the program). At Peter Schmidt's studio, in his mother's apartment, we taped another one-hour program with just Kawi Schneider and me, in which we especially went into the questions of "safer sex" and risk- reduction guidelines.

There are an impressive number of "AIDS" critics in Berlin, and I met some of them at an impromptu Arbeitsessen (working dinner) held at the Cafe Luise, a lovely outdoor beer garden and restaurant. Peter Duesberg was there, along with his wife, Astrid, and his mother, Dr. Hilde Duesberg, a retired eye specialist. Also present, with her companion, Dorothee Riehl, was Erika Weiss, who for many years has been a leader in Berlin's lesbian and gay movement. (Mrs. Weiss' son, Laurence, is a prominent gay leader who has now been diagnosed with "AIDS".) Others there included two young biologists, Ilse Laas and Guido Hner; a well-known cartoonist, "Titus"; a lawyer, Siegbert Setsevits; Kawi Schneider, Peter Schmidt and his mother, and me. It was a very pleasant occasion, but I would also like to think that some day, when we have triumphed over the forces of ignorance and repression, such meetings will be regarded as historically important. *

BOX A Amsterdam, 16 May 1992 We, the undersigned, wish to make it emphatically clear that we do not share Dr. Peter Duesberg's view that safe sex practices are irrelevant to the spread of "AIDS". There is absolutely no doubt that condom use is one critical element necessary to control the spread of this disease. While we acknowledge the important contribution Dr. Duesberg has made in re-opening the question of the role of HIV in "AIDS", his outrageous assertion that safe sex is irrelevant to the spread of AIDS is appalling and may kill people. Whatever the cause of "AIDS", the dynamics of its acquisition clearly indicate that the proper use of condoms is one of the best weapons we have in the war against "AIDS" and sexually transmitted diseases. (Signed by Dr. Gordon Stewart, Dr. Root-Bernstein, Dr. Luca- Moretti, Dr. Martien Brands, Michael Callen, Dr. Joseph A. Sonnabend, Dr. Eleopolis, Dr. Madeleine Bastide, Dr. Jeffrey Leiphart.)

BOX B Amsterdam, 16 May 1992 We the undersigned condemn the attack on the integrity of Peter Duesberg and his right to speak the truth as he sees it. In the case of risk-reduction guidelines, almost total emphasis has been placed on "safer sex", whereas drug addicts have been given the message that drug use is all right, so long as the needles are clean. Gay men have not been warned about the dangers of recreational drug use, including "poppers" (nitrite inhalants), a highly hazardous drug sold legally in Amsterdam and London. Prof. Duesberg supports safer sex in preventing venereal diseases and unwanted pregnancies, but believes that safer sex cannot prevent the spread of "AIDS". We object to the inflammatory language of the press statement released earlier today, which includes the grave assertion that Duesberg's ideas "may kill people". Peter Duesberg is a man of great integrity, who has been in the front line of combatting the AIDS orthodoxies, which have caused and continue to cause so much death and suffering. He has a right to his opinions. (Signed by Jeffrey Leiphart, Cass Mann, Celia Farber, F.B. Buianouckas, Dietmar Schildwaechter, Michael Verney-Elliott, Michael Ellner, Dave Gilliland, Bob Owen, David Missen, France Michel, Joan Shenton, Charles Bixley, and John Lauritsen.)

References

1. Terri Creagh-Kirk et al., "Survival Experience Among Patients With AIDS Receiving Zidovudine [AZT]: Follow-up of Patients in a Compassionate Plea Program", Journal of the American Medical Association, 25 November 1988.(For a critique of this rubbish see Chapter V of my book, "Poison By Prescription: The AZT Story", New York 1990.)

2. Philip A. Pizzo, "Effect of Continuous Intravenous Infusion of Zidovudine (AZT) in Children with Symptomatic HIV Infection", New England Journal of Medicine, 6 October 1988.

3. Paul A. Volberding and Stephen W. Lagakos, et al, "Zidovudine in Asymptomatic Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection: A Controlled Trial in Persons with Fewer than 500 CD4-Positive Cells per Cubic Millimeter", New England Journal of Medicine, 5 April 1990.(This study is critiqued briefly in "Poison By Prescription", pp 129-30.)

4. Neil M.H. Graham et al., "The Effects on Survival of Early Treatment of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection", New England Journal of Medicine, 16 April 1992.The tables in this study are so defective from the standpoint of professional research, and the methodology section so inadequate, that it does not deserve to be taken seriously.

5. John Lauritsen, "FDA Documents Show Fraud in AZT Trials: Info Obtained Under Freedom of Information Act Calls Drug's Approval Into Question", New York Native, 30 March 1992. Also see Chapter II, "AZT on Trial", in Poison By Prescription.

6. Peter H. Duesberg, "Human Immunodeficiency Virus And Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome: Correlation But Not Causation", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 86 (February 1989).

7. Peter H. Duesberg, "AIDS Epidemiology: Inconsistencies With Human Immunodeficiency Virus And With Infectious Disease", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 88 (February 1991).

8. Peter H. Duesberg, "The role of drugs in the origin of AIDS", Biomed & Pharmacother, (1992) 46.

9. Felix Eijgenraam, "Dutch AIDS Researchers Feel Heat of Publicity: A paper describing a way to block HIV infectivity brought the authors a lot of attention, but their work was flawed", Science, 22 March 1991, pp. 1422-23.