VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE

DUESBERG AND THE RIGHT OF REPLY ACCORDING TO MADDOX-NATURE

By Peter Duesberg & Harvey Bialy

In 1993 John Maddox, the editor of Nature, commissioned a commentary refuting the hypothesis that drugs cause AIDS (Ascher et al., 1993). The piece described 215 patients each of which had used drugs (Duesberg, 1993a; Duesberg, 1993b; Duesberg, 1993c). In view of this Duesberg sent a letter to Nature arguing that the perfect correlation between drug use and AIDS confirmed, rather than refuted, the drug hypothesis. Maddox censored the letter and wrote an editorial "Has Duesberg a Right of Reply?" (Maddox, 1993). The editorial pointed out that the world's oldest science journal could not afford an open scientific debate on the cause of AIDS because of the perceived dangers of infectious AIDS.

In an editorial on January 19, 1995, Maddox promised to lift the censorship to give "Duesberg and his associates an opportunity to comment" on two Nature studies that in his opinion prove the HIV-AIDS hypothesis.

In the following we document how Maddox-Nature honors its commitments. Our documentation includes:

(i) A copy of Maddox' News and Views article of January 19, 1995,

(ii) A summary of a phone conversation between Maddox and Bialy,

(iii) Our letter to Maddox answering his invitation,

(iv) Our commentary on the two new Nature studies,

(v) Maddox' response to our commentary,

(vi) Our response to Maddox,

(vii) What Nature published from and about Duesberg and Bialy on May 18, 1995,

(viii) Letter from Peter Duesberg to John Maddox

(ix) Nature's final letter.

References:

Ascher, M. S., H. W. Sheppard, W. Winkelstein Jr., and E. Vittinghoff, 1993. Does drug use cause AIDS? Nature (London) 362: 103-104.

Duesberg, P., 1993a. Aetiology of AIDS. Lancet 341: 1544.

Duesberg, P., 1993b. HIV and the aetiology of AIDS. Lancet 341: 957-958.

Duesberg, P. H., 1993c. Can epidemiology determine whether drugs or HIV cause AIDS? AIDS-Forschung 12: 627-635.

Maddox, J., 1993. Has Duesberg a right of reply? Nature (London) 363: 109.

VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE