The Duesberg hypothesis is the claim that AIDS is not caused by HIV, but instead that AIDS is caused by noninfectious factors such as recreational and pharmaceutical drug use and that HIV is merely a harmless passenger virus. The hypothesis was popularized by Peter Duesberg, a professor of biology at University of California, Berkeley, from whom the hypothesis gets its name. The scientific consensus is that the Duesberg hypothesis is incorrect and that HIV is the cause of AIDS. The most prominent supporters of the hypothesis are Duesberg himself, biochemist and vitamin proponent David Rasnick, and journalist Celia Farber. The scientific community generally contends that Duesberg's arguments in favor of the hypothesis are the result of cherry-picking predominantly outdated scientific data and selectively ignoring evidence that demonstrates HIV's role in causing AIDS.
Peter Heinz Hermann Duesberg is a German-American molecular biologist and a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his early research into the genetic aspects of cancer. He is a proponent of AIDS denialism, the claim that HIV does not cause AIDS.
Paul Murray Fleiss was an American pediatrician and author known for his unconventional medical views. Fleiss was a popular and sought-after pediatrician in the Greater Los Angeles area, both among poor and middle-class patients living near his Los Feliz office and among Southern California celebrities. Fleiss was a breastfeeding and anti-circumcision advocate. He recommended but did not insist upon childhood vaccinations, and stated he could be "convinced either way" as to whether HIV causes AIDS. In 1995, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy and bank fraud in relation to his daughter Heidi's prostitution ring.
HIV/AIDS denialism is the belief, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Some of its proponents reject the existence of HIV, while others accept that HIV exists but argue that it is a harmless passenger virus and not the cause of AIDS. Insofar as they acknowledge AIDS as a real disease, they attribute it to some combination of sexual behavior, recreational drugs, malnutrition, poor sanitation, haemophilia, or the effects of the medications used to treat HIV infection (antiretrovirals).
Mark Arnold Wainberg, was a Canadian HIV/AIDS researcher and HIV/AIDS activist. He was the Director of the McGill University AIDS Centre at the Montreal Jewish General Hospital and Professor of Medicine and of Microbiology at McGill University. His laboratory primarily studies HIV reverse transcriptase, the molecular basis for drug resistance, and gene therapy. He received a B.Sc. from McGill University in 1966, a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1972, and did his post-doctoral research at Hadassah Medical School of the Hebrew University.
Christine Joy Maggiore was an HIV-positive activist and promoter of HIV/AIDS denialism. She was the founder of Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives, an organization which disputes the link between HIV and AIDS and urges HIV-positive pregnant women to avoid anti-HIV medication. Maggiore authored and self-published the book What If Everything You Thought You Knew about AIDS Was Wrong?
Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives is a 501(c) non-profit organization of AIDS denialists. The organization's stated mission is to "present information that raises questions about the accuracy of HIV tests, the safety and effectiveness of AIDS drug treatments, and the validity of most common assumptions about HIV and AIDS." The organization's founder, Christine Maggiore estimated in 2005 that the organization had assisted about 50 HIV-positive mothers in developing legal strategies to avoid having their children tested or treated for HIV.
Harvey Bialy was an American molecular biologist and AIDS denialist. He was one of the signatories to a letter to the editor by the "Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis", which denied that HIV was the cause of AIDS, and was a member of the controversial and heavily criticized South African Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel convened by Thabo Mbeki in 2000. Bialy authored a scientific biography of Peter Duesberg, a fellow AIDS denialist, in 2004.
Gary Michael Null is an American talk radio host and author who advocates pseudoscientific alternative medicine and produces a line of questionable dietary supplements.
Celia Ingrid Farber is an American print journalist and author who has covered a range of topics for magazines including Spin, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Harper's, Interview, Salon, Gear, New York Press, Media Post, The New York Post and Sunday Herald, and is best known for her controversial beliefs about HIV and AIDS, and a 1998 report on O. J. Simpson's post-trial life. Farber is the daughter of radio talk pioneer Barry Farber and a graduate of New York University.
In the psychology of human behavior, denialism is a person's choice to deny reality as a way to avoid believing in a psychologically uncomfortable truth. Denialism is an essentially irrational action that withholds the validation of a historical experience or event when a person refuses to accept an empirically verifiable reality.
Medical Hypotheses is a not-conventionally-peer-reviewed medical journal published by Elsevier. It was originally intended as a forum for unconventional ideas without the traditional filter of scientific peer review, "as long as are coherent and clearly expressed" in order to "foster the diversity and debate upon which the scientific process thrives." The publication of papers on AIDS denialism led to calls to remove it from PubMed, the United States National Library of Medicine online journal database. Following the AIDS papers controversy, Elsevier forced a change in the journal's leadership. In June 2010, Elsevier announced that "submitted manuscripts will be reviewed by the Editor and external reviewers to ensure their scientific merit".
Pride Chigwedere, a Zimbabwean national, is a Harvard trained physician-scientist working in global health. He is most notable for leading a team of Harvard researchers who demonstrated that South African President Thabo Mbeki's AIDS policies led to more than 300 000 deaths. While South Africa's policies were condemned by many, Chigwedere's contribution was in developing and applying methods to quantify the impact of the policies thus demonstrating the calamitous consequences of AIDS denialism. Generalized, he developed an approach for evaluating public health practice and highlighted the need to develop a framework for accountability in public health. Drawing from the analogy with medicine, he has proposed the concept of public health malpractice to capture negligence that causes harm as a useful first step towards accountability in public health. A response to Chigwedere's work by AIDS denialists led by Peter Duesberg was initially published by the non-peer-reviewed journal Medical Hypotheses followed by a retraction because of poor quality of data, undeclared conflicts of interest, and potential effects on global health.
House of Numbers: Anatomy of an Epidemic is a 2009 film directed, produced, and hosted by Brent Leung and described by him as an objective examination of the idea that HIV causes AIDS. The film argues that human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is harmless and does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), a position known as AIDS denialism. The film's claims of impartiality have been widely rejected by scientists, and the film's claims about HIV and AIDS have been dismissed as pseudoscience and conspiracy theory masquerading as even-handed examination.
The Perth Group is a group of HIV/AIDS denialists based in Perth, Western Australia who claim, in opposition to the scientific consensus, that the existence of HIV is not proven, and that AIDS and all the "HIV" phenomena are caused by changes in cellular redox due to the oxidative nature of substances and exposures common to all the AIDS risk groups, and are caused by the cell conditions used in the "culture" and "isolation" of "HIV".
Eliza Jane Scovill was the daughter of AIDS denialist Christine Maggiore, an HIV-positive activist who publicly questioned the link between HIV and AIDS, and supported HIV-positive pregnant women who want to avoid taking anti-HIV medication. Eliza Jane's May 16, 2005 death from AIDS, at the age of three and a half, sparked a social and legal controversy over her mother's decision not to take precautions during pregnancy and breastfeeding to prevent transmission of the virus, and her parents' decision to not have her treated for HIV infection during her life.
Inventing the AIDS Virus is a 1996 book by molecular biologist Peter Duesberg, in which the author argues that HIV does not cause AIDS. Duesberg contends that HIV is a harmless passenger virus and that AIDS is caused by unrelated factors such as drug abuse, antiretroviral medication, chronic malnutrition, poor sanitation, and hemophilia. The unambiguous scientific consensus is that HIV causes AIDS and that Duesberg's claims are incorrect. Duesberg received a negative response from the scientific community for supporting AIDS denialism, misrepresenting and ignoring the scientific evidence that HIV causes AIDS, and for relying upon poor logic and manipulation. The book was also the subject of an authorship dispute with one of his graduate students.
In South Africa, HIV/AIDS denialism had a significant impact on public health policy from 1999 to 2008, during the presidency of Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki criticized the scientific consensus that HIV is the cause of AIDS beginning shortly after his election to the presidency. In 2000, he organized a Presidential Advisory Panel regarding HIV/AIDS including several scientists who denied that HIV caused AIDS.
Joan Alicia Shenton is a British-Chilean broadcaster who has produced and presented programmes for radio and television.
5B is a 2018 American documentary film directed by Dan Krauss and Paul Haggis about the efforts of a group of nurses and caregivers who opened the first AIDS ward in the world at San Francisco General Hospital and changed the way patients were cared for in the 1980s AIDS epidemic.
