HIV/AIDS Denialism - History

History

In 1983, a group of scientists and doctors at the Pasteur Institute in France, led by Luc Montagnier, discovered a new virus in a patient with signs and symptoms that often preceded AIDS. They named the virus lymphadenopathy-associated virus, or LAV, and sent samples to Robert Gallo's team in the United States. Their findings were peer reviewed and slated for publication in Science.

At an 23 April 1984 press conference in Washington, D.C., Margaret Heckler, Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced that Gallo and his co-workers had discovered a virus that is the "probable" cause of AIDS. This virus was initially named HTLV-III. That same year, Casper Schmidt responded to Gallo's papers with "The Group-Fantasy Origins of AIDS", Journal of Psychohistory. Schmidt posited that AIDS was not an actual disease, but rather an example of "epidemic hysteria" in which groups of people are subconsciously acting out social conflicts. Schmidt compared AIDS to documented cases of epidemic hysteria in the past which were mistakenly thought to be infectious. (Schmidt himself would later die of AIDS in 1994.)

In 1986, the viruses discovered by Montagnier and Gallo, found to be genetically indistinguishable, were renamed HIV. In 1987 Peter Duesberg questioned the link between HIV and AIDS in the journal Cancer Research. Duesberg's publication coincided with the start of major public health campaigns and the development of zidovudine (AZT) as a treatment for HIV/AIDS.

In 1988, a panel of the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences found that "the evidence that HIV causes AIDS is scientifically conclusive." That same year, Science published Blattner, Gallo, and Temin's HIV causes AIDS, and Peter Duesberg's HIV is not the cause of AIDS. Also that same year, The Perth Group, a group of denialists based in Perth, Western Australia led by Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, published in the non-peer-reviewed journal Medical Hypotheses their first article questioning aspects of HIV/AIDS research, arguing that there was "no compelling reason for preferring the viral hypothesis of AIDS to one based on the activity of oxidising agents."

In 1989, Duesberg exercised his right, as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, to bypass the peer review process and publish his arguments in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) unreviewed. The editor of PNAS initially resisted, but ultimately allowed Duesberg to publish, saying: "If you wish to make these unsupported, vague, and prejudicial statements in print, so be it. But I cannot see how this would be convincing to any scientifically trained reader." In 1990, Robert Root-Bernstein published his first peer-reviewed article detailing his objections to the mainstream view of AIDS and HIV. In it, he questioned both the mainstream view and the "dissident" view as potentially inaccurate. In 1991, The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis, comprising twelve scientists, doctors, and activists, submitted a short letter to various journals, but the letter was rejected.

In 1993, Nature published an editorial arguing that Duesberg had forfeited his right of reply by engaging in disingenuous rhetorical techniques and ignoring any evidence that conflicted with his claims. That same year, a trio of HIV/AIDS denialists alleged in the journal Nature Biotechnology (then edited by fellow denialist Harvey Bialy) that the Western blot test for HIV was not standardized, non-reproducible, and of unknown specificity due to a claimed lack of a "gold standard". On 28 October 1994, Robert Willner, a physician whose medical license had been revoked for, among other things, treating an AIDS patient with ozone therapy, publicly jabbed his finger with blood he said was from an HIV-infected patient. Willner died in 1995 of a heart attack. That same year, Continuum, a denialist group, placed an advertisement in the British gay and lesbian magazine The Pink Paper offering a £1,000 reward to "the first person finding one scientific paper establishing actual isolation of HIV", according to a set of seven steps they claimed to have been drawn up by the Pasteur Institute in 1973. The challenge was later dismissed by various scientists, including Duesberg, asserting that HIV undoubtedly exists.

In 1995, a letter similar to the one submitted by The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis in 1991, was published in Science.

In 1996, the British Medical Journal published Response: arguments contradict the "foreign protein-zidovudine" hypothesis as a response to a petition by Peter Duesberg: "In 1991 Duesberg challenged researchers… We and Darby et al. have provided that evidence". The paper argued that Duesberg was wrong regarding the cause of AIDS in haemophiliacs. In 1997, The Perth Group questioned the existence of HIV, and speculated that the production of antibodies recognizing HIV proteins can be caused by allogenic stimuli and autoimmune disorders. They continued to repeat this speculation through at least 2006.

In 2006, Celia Farber, a journalist and prominent HIV/AIDS denialist, published an essay in the March issue of Harper's Magazine entitled "Out of Control: AIDS and the Corruption of Medical Science", in which she summarized a number of arguments for HIV/AIDS denialism and alleged incompetence, conspiracy, and fraud on the part of the medical community. Scientists and AIDS activists extensively criticized the article as inaccurate, misleading, and poorly fact-checked. In 2007, members of the Perth Group testified at an appeals hearing for Andre Chad Parenzee, asserting that HIV could not be transmitted by heterosexual sex. The judge concluded, "I reject the evidence of Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos and Dr Turner. I conclude… that they are not qualified to give expert opinions."