VIRAL UNLOAD
Columbia's upcoming "AIDS-without-HIV" conference presents the other side of the story

By Mark Anderson

Valley and Springfield Advocate 25 Sept. 1997

"The medical establishment has become a major threat to health."

With this gambit, author Ivan Illich launches into his book Medical Nemesis, analyzing what he terms "iatrogenic disease" -- doctor-created illness -- and dissecting the mythologies surrounding modern medicine. Illich wrote Medical Nemesis in 1976. Much has happened since then.

From Oct. 2 through 5, the government of Columbia will be hosting an international symposium calling the theory that HIV causes AIDS into question. As The Advocate has reported previously ("The Big 'Tease," 20 Feb. 1997 and "What if He's Right," 30 May 1996), several hundred prominent research scientists around the world have questioned the assumption that AIDS is caused by the HIV retrovirus or, for that matter, by any virus at all. Their work centers on the alternative hypothesis that the syndrome of diseases and immune dysfunction known as AIDS is brought on by one or more non-viral and/or iatrogenic factors. The three leading causes, according to the non-viral AIDS theory, are recreational drug usage, side-effects from therapies for other conditions -- such as Clotting Factor VIII for hemophiliacs -- and toxic drugs such as AZT and ddI prescribed in conventional AIDS treatments. In the developing world, factors such as malnutrition may also play a role in what is now called "African AIDS."

Prof. Peter Duesberg, often cited as America's leading AIDS dissident researcher, will be attending the "AIDS-without-HIV" conference and will also chair the proceedings on the morning of Oct. 3. When The Advocate reached him at his lab at the University of California, Berkeley recently, he was cheered that such scientific forums are available to AIDS dissidents. But he saw little prospect for open scientific debate on the viral AIDS hypothesis closer to home.

"Our 'War on AIDS' is a complete failure," he said. "The American taxpayer has laid out $35 billion, and still the viral AIDS hypothesis has not saved one life. It has not produced a vaccine. It can't even predict what diseases an AIDS patient will come down with. And yet [the viral researchers] are the sole recipients of funding, research and grants. Where else do you have that kind of totalitarianism in science?"

In his ten years fighting the HIV-AIDS orthodoxy, Duesberg has paid a heavy price for his dissent. Described by supporters and critics alike as perhaps the world's leading expert on retroviruses, Duesberg has only found hostility where he expected to find skeptical inquiry. The fact that the Universidad Industrial de Santander had to call this conference, he notes, shows how balkanized the controversy has become. "It's like the Catholics meet in Rome, the Jews meet in Jerusalem. And they don't go to the same church," he remarked. "I thought that was a strength of science. We all go to the same church. We share our information. It's when we split into factions, and only those who believe one thing go here and only those who believe in the other thing go there -- that is a disaster for science."

Duesberg's outspokenness has also made him into an unlikely lightening rod. Rather than addressing the community of researchers -- including several Nobel Prize winners -- who now actively question the existence of an "AIDS virus," orthodox critics frequently treat Duesberg as the "lone nut" behind the AIDS dissident camp. "[Duesberg] has found an evergreen audience among certain voracious investigative journalists of the lay press," writes Steven J. O'Brien in the February 1997 HIV Newsline. "Controversy and conspiracy theories sell better than sobersided factual analysis, especially in fringe publications, and Duesberg has provided those publications with more than his share of both."

Yet, as the lineup to this week's conference demonstrates, there's much more to the world of nonviral AIDS research than what comes from the unfunded labs of Dr. Duesberg and from the pens of his "voracious" minions. Dr. Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, professor of medical physics at the Royal Perth Hospital in Western Australia, will be at the conference. After more than a decade of studies on the subject, her team continues to point out the doubtful existence of HIV itself. That is, despite photographs and illustrations claiming to show the HIV virus, no one has even proved that HIV exists.

Indeed, if anyone can prove HIV exists, they're also £1000 richer thanks to a reward set up in 1995 by the British AIDS dissident journal Continuum. Two claims have been made on the reward. (One, in fact, by Duesberg.) Both were unsatisfactory, according to the standards established by the Pasteur Institute in 1973.

Still, Papadopulos-Eleopulos finds little prospect for having a fair hearing in Australia, America or Europe. Scientific studies in medical journals are little ammunition against pharmaceutical companies making billions of dollars every year on the viral-AIDS hypothesis. The subject, she said in an email interview, is "never fairly reported, but slight changes are being made as more people take it up elsewhere."

Dr. David Rasnick, AIDS researcher since the dawn of the epidemic, is at least hopeful for the conference's host country. "Columbia may be the first country in the world to reassess their HIV-AIDS stance," he said. But would an American audience hear about that national change of heart? "I expect silence. No U.S. coverage," Rasnick responded. "The U.S. is going to be the last to hear about anything like this. I mean, I wish somebody would publicize it in the U.S. I doubt it, though."

Papadopulos-Eleopulos is equally pessimistic about the prospects for nonviral AIDS research in the industrialized world anytime soon. "[There could be] serious discussion maybe by 2000 -- I mean with the HIV protagonists. (If one had some funds to do them)," she noted. "Total resolution may not be in my lifetime. I'm 52 going on 70. Been at this for 14 years." *