1. Charles A. Thomas Jr., telephone interview by author, 27 October 1992. [BACK]

2. Charles A. Thomas Jr., form letter, 18 June 1991. [BACK]

3. Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis, unpublished letter, n.d. (ca. June 1991). [BACK]

4. A different, and longer, version of the letter ultimately was published in Science, more than two and a half years later: Eleen Baumann et al., "AIDS Proposal," Science 267 (17 February 1995): 945-946 (letter to the editor). [BACK]

5. Tony Perry, "San Diego at Large: Is It Politically Incorrect to Challenge AIDS-HIV Link?" Los Angeles Times, 9 September 1991, B-1, San Diego County edition. [BACK]

6. Thomas J. DeLoughry, "40 Scientists Call on Colleagues to Re-evaluate AIDS Theory," Chronicle of Higher Education, 4 December 1991, A-9. [BACK]

7. John Maddox, "AIDS Research Turned Upside Down," Nature 353 (26 September 1991): 297. [BACK]

8. Roger Highfield, "Pilloried Professor May Be Right about Aids," Daily Telegraph, 26 September 1991, 6. (In Britain, the syndrome has generally been spelled with a combination of upper- and lowercase letters, as "Aids.") [BACK]

9. Randy Peters, "New Study Vindicates Duesberg, Calls AIDS an Auto-immune Disease," Bay Area Reporter, 14 November 1991, 24. [BACK]

10. Joseph Palca, "Duesberg Vindicated? Not Yet," Science 254 (18 October 1991): 376. [BACK]

11. Ibid. [BACK]

12. Joseph Sonnabend, "AIDS Research: All Sound and No Fury," NYQ, 1 December 1991, 50-51. [BACK]

13. Anonymous reviews accompanying letter from Igor B. Dawid to Peter Duesberg, 12 February 1991. [BACK]

14. Peter Duesberg, interview by author, tape recording, Berkeley, Calif., 28 September 1992. [BACK]

15. My account here is based on a follow-up interview with Bryan Ellison, 23 October 1992. [BACK]

16. P. H. Duesberg, "The Role of Drugs in the Origin of AIDS," Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy 46 (January 1992): 3-15, quotes from 5, 8, 10. [BACK]

17. Ibid., 5-6. [BACK]

18. Margaret A. Fischl et al., "The Efficacy of Azidothymidine (AZT) in the Treatment of Patients with AIDS and AIDS-Related Complex," New England Journal of Medicine 317 (23 July 1987): 185-191. For debates, see Ezra Bowen, "Fateful Decisions on Treating AIDS," Time, 2 February 1987, 62; and John Lauritsen, Poison by Prescription: The AZT Story (New York: Asklepios, 1990), 19. [BACK]

19. See the extended discussion of AZT studies in part two of this book. [BACK]

20. In 1989, an open letter in the New York Native describing the use of AZT as "genocide" was signed by a range of community representatives, including Ortleb and Neenyah Ostrom from the Native staff; Lauritsen; James D'Eramo; and ACT UP member Michael Petrelis ("An Open Letter to Mayor Koch," New York Native, 21 August 1989, 23). [BACK]

21. See, for example, Michael Callen, "A Dinosaur's Diary," NYQ, 12 April 1992, 49-78. [BACK]

22. Duesberg, "The Role of Drugs," 7, 9, 11. [BACK]

23. Alfred S. Evans, "Author's Reply," Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes 2 (October 1989): 515-517 (letter to the editor). [BACK]

24. Neville Hodgkinson, "Experts Mount Startling Challenge to Aids Orthodoxy," Sunday Times (London), 26 April 1992, 1; Neville Hodgkinson, "Aids: Can We Be Positive?" Sunday Times (London), 26 April 1992, 12-13; Neville Hodgkinson, "Time to Think Again on Aids Link, Claims HIV Pioneer," Sunday Times (London), 26 April 1992, 13. [BACK]

25. Hodgkinson, "Aids: Can We Be Positive?" 12. In conversation, Duesberg identified himself to me as the observer quoted. [BACK]

26. Clive Cooksun and Jenny Lynch, "A Chain Reaction—A Simple Method of Analysing Genetic Material Could Be Worth Billions of Dollars," Financial Times, 2 October 1992, 19. [BACK]

27. Hodgkinson, "Aids: Can We Be Positive?" 12. [BACK]

28. Nigel Hawkes, "Scientists Challenge Aids Link to HIV," Times (London), 27 April 1992. [BACK]

29. "Wellcome Defends AZT Against Aids Report," Reuters, 27 April 1992. [BACK]

30. Steve Connor, "Government Fears Complacency over Aids Prevention," The Independent, 2 May 1992. [BACK]

31. William Leith, "New Theories, Old Prejudices," The Independent, 10 May 1992, 22 (op-ed). [BACK]

32. Steve Connor, "The Spreading of a Terrible Myth," The Independent, 14 May 1992, 25 (op-ed). [BACK]

33. Malcolm Dean, "London Perspective: AIDS and the Murdoch Press," Lancet 339 (23 May 1992): 1286 (News & Comment section). [BACK]

34. Pierre Bourdieu, "The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of the Progress of Reason," Social Science Information 14 (December 1975): 19-47, esp. 30. [BACK]

35. Duesberg, interview. [BACK]

36. Peter Gorner, "A Lively Cocktail Party of Scientists," Chicago Tribune, 15 November 1989, C-3. [BACK]

37. "Last of the Great Tinkerers," Time, 12 August 1991, 55. [BACK]

38. Tony Perry, "San Diego at Large: When You're a Flaky Genius, Problems Can Cease to Exist," Los Angeles Times, 1 September 1991, B-1, San Diego County edition. [BACK]

39. Kary B. Mullis, "The Unusual Origins of the Polymerase Chain Reaction," Scientific American 262 (April 1990): 56. [BACK]

40. Perry, "San Diego at Large." [BACK]

41. Scott LaFee, "San Diegan Wins Chemistry Nobel," San Diego Union-Tribune, 14 October 1993, A-1. [BACK]

42. Peter H. Duesberg, "Can Alternative Hypotheses Survive in This Era of Megaprojects?" The Scientist, 8 July 1991, 12 (commentary). [BACK]

43. Ian Geogheagn, "U.K. Health Body Attacks Alternative Aids Claims," Reuters, 15 May 1992. [BACK]

44. Nigel Hawkes, "Scientists Reject Role of HIV in Aids Cases," Times (London), 15 May 1992. [BACK]

45. Tom Fennell, "What Causes AIDS," Macleans, 1 June 1992, 32. [BACK]

46. "The New AIDS Controversy: Research World Torn by Theory That Says HIV May Not Trigger Deadly Disease," Toronto Star, 7 June 1992, B-1. [BACK]

47. National Public Radio (segment reported by Mike Hornwick, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), NPR Weekend Edition, 16 May 1992. [BACK]

48. Avril McDonald, "HIV Does Not Cause AIDS, Virus Discoverer Claims," QW, 10 May 1992, 63. [BACK]

49. Neenyah Ostrom, "Montagnier: HIV Is Not the Cause," New York Native, 11 May 1992, 7. [BACK]

50. Arturo Jackson III, "Is the HIV Virus Really the True Cause of AIDS?" San Francisco Sentinel, 7 May 1992, 1. [BACK]

51. On Delaney's relationship with Gallo and perceptions of him, see Jonathan Kwitny, Acceptable Risks (New York: Poseidon Press, 1992), 337, 343-344, 413, 460-461. [BACK]

52. Reporter Lisa Krieger printed excerpts from the letter in her "AIDS-WEEK" column in the San Francisco Examiner, 20 May 1992, A-2. [BACK]

53. Luc Montagnier, letter to Martin Delaney, Paris, 12 May 1992. [BACK]

54. "Discussion Paper #5" (Project Inform, San Francisco, 3 June 1992, photocopy), 1 (boldface in the original). [BACK]

55. Ibid., 5. [BACK]

56. Ibid. [BACK]

57. Ibid., 2. [BACK]

58. Ibid. [BACK]

59. Ibid., 5-6. [BACK]

60. Ibid., 3. [BACK]

61. Duesberg, interview. [BACK]

62. Bruce Livesey and Ellen Lipsius, "AIDS: Modern Medicine's Achilles' Heel," Canadian Dimension, October 1989, 27-30, quote from 28. [BACK]

63. Thomas, interview. [BACK]

64. The quotes are from an article describing the magazine: Paul Ciotti, "John Kurzweil of Sherman Oaks Publishes a Conservative Political Magazine," Los Angeles Times, 14 August 1992, 20. [BACK]

65. Tom Bethell, "The Case for Buchanan," National Review, 2 March 1992: 34-37 (cover story). [BACK]

66. Tom Bethell, "Column Right: We May Regret Going Along with This: The Gay-Rights Agenda Precludes Any Public Doubts," Los Angeles Times, 8 July 1991, B-5 (op-ed). [BACK]

67. Tom Bethell, "Conversations in the Tenderloin," California Political Review, fall 1991: 20-23. [BACK]

68. "Discussion Paper #5," 4. [BACK]

69. Ellison, interview. [BACK]

70. Thomas Ryan, "AIDS as Career," Christopher Street, May 1988, 28-35, quote from 31. [BACK]

71. Drew Hopkins, "Peter Duesberg and the Media," Christopher Street, April 1988, 52-59. [BACK]

72. Geoffrey Cowley, "Is a New AIDS Virus Emerging?" Newsweek, 27 July 1992, 41. [BACK]

73. Lawrence K. Altman, "New Virus Said to Cause a Condition Like AIDS," New York Times, 23 July 1992, B-8. [BACK]

74. Cowley, "Is a New AIDS Virus Emerging?" 41. [BACK]

75. See Martin Delaney's report: "Does a New Virus Stalk the Land?" Advocate, 25 August 1992, 33. [BACK]

76. Peter Duesberg, "HIV-Free AIDS Reports," Science 257 (21 September 1992): 1848 (letter to the editor). [BACK]

77. Steve Heimoff, "Test Ideas with Science, Not Scorn: Critics Who Insist That HIV Doesn't Cause AIDS May Be Wrong, but Their Argument Deserves Checking," Los Angeles Times, 28 July 1992, B-7 (op-ed). [BACK]

78. Michael Fumento, "A Complicated Disease Won't Have Simple Answers: The AIDS Establishment Needs Critics, but Arguing That HIV Doesn't Cause the Disease Is Murderously Wrong," Los Angeles Times, 28 July 1992, B-7 (op-ed). [BACK]

79. Peter H. Duesberg and Bryan J. Ellison, letter to the editor, Los Angeles Times, 7 August 1992, B-6. [BACK]

80. Bruce Mirken, "The Twilight Zone," QW, 9 August 1992, 44, 67, 68; John S. James, "AIDS Treatment News,' San Francisco Bay Times, 13 August 1992, 12-14. [BACK]

81. Delaney, "Does a New Virus Stalk the Land?" 33. [BACK]

82. Charles E. Ortleb, "Honey, I Blew Up the HIV Paradigm," New York Native, 3 August 1992, 4 (editorial). [BACK]

83. Geoffrey Cowley, "AIDS or Chronic Fatigue?" Newsweek, 7 September 1992, 66. [BACK]

84. Christine Gorman, "Invincible AIDS," Time, 3 August 1992, 28-37. The magazine's cover read: "Losing the Battle." [BACK]

85. Daniel J. DeNoon, "Jury Still Out on Etiology of HIV-Negative CD4 Deficiency," CDC AIDS Weekly, 24 August 1992, 2-6 (news report). [BACK]

86. "Unexplained CD4 + T-Lymphocyte Depletion in Persons without Evident HIV Infection—United States," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 41 (31 July 1992): 541-545; "Update: CD4 + T-Lymphocytopenia in Persons without Evident HIV Infection—United States," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 41 (7 August 1992): 578-579. [BACK]

87. DeNoon, "Jury Still Out," 3. [BACK]

88. World Health Organization Global Programme on AIDS, Report of a Scientific Meeting on Unexplained Severe Immunodeficiency without Evidence of HIV Infection (Geneva, 28-29 September 1992). [BACK]

89. One report was: Omar Bagasra et al., "Detection of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type-1 Provirus in Mononuclear Cells by In Situ Polymerase Chain Reaction," New England Journal of Medicine 326 (21 May 1992): 1385-1391. The other report was made by Dr. David Ho at a Burroughs Wellcome symposium in Amsterdam (described in: Ronald A. Baker, "Treatment Updates from the Harvard-Amsterdam AIDS Conference," BETA, August 1992, 1-11). [BACK]

90. Janet Embretson et al., "Analysis of Human Immunodeficiency Virus-Infected Tissues by Amplification and In Situ Hybridization Reveals Latent and Permissive Infections at Single-Cell Resolution," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 90 (January 1993): 357. [BACK]

91. David Perlman, "HIV Is Never Truly Latent, Lymphoid Cell Studies Show," San Francisco Chronicle, 25 March 1993, A-2. [BACK]

92. John Maddox, "Facing the Cruel Truth about HIV," Times (London), 25 March 1993 (features section). [BACK]

93. Lawrence K. Altman, "Cost of Treating AIDS Patients Is Soaring," New York Times, 23 July 1992, B-8. [BACK]

94. Kevin J. P. Craib et al., "HIV Causes AIDS: A Controlled Study" (Abstract #WeC 1027), VIII International Conference on AIDS, Amsterdam, 22 July 1992. [BACK]

95. This exchange occurred in a UC Berkeley classroom debate: "IDS Seminar Series" (forum on causes of AIDS, with Peter Duesberg, Warren Winkelstein, and Chip Shepard), University of California at Berkeley, 28 September 1992 (author's field notes). [BACK]

96. M. S. Ascher et al., "Does Drug Use Cause AIDS?" Nature 362 (11 March 1993): 103-104. [BACK]

98. Ascher et al., "Does Drug Use Cause AIDS?" 103. [BACK]

99. H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr. and Arthur L. Caplan, "Patterns of Controversy and Closure: The Interplay of Knowledge, Values, and Political Forces," in Scientific Controversies: Case Studies in the Resolution and Closure of Disputes in Science and Technology, ed. H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr. and Arthur L. Caplan (Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987), 6, 11. [BACK]

100. Fujimura and Chou have contended that Duesberg relied on a "laboratory style of practice" and his adversaries employed an "epidemiological style of practice." While that may be correct, over time both sides came to emphasize epidemiology as the science that could conceivably provide the most definitive evidence. See Joan H. Fujimura and Danny Y. Chou, "Dissent in Science: Styles of Scientific Practice and the Controversy over the Cause of AIDS," Social Science and Medicine 38 (April 1994): 1017-1036. [BACK]

101. Bryan Ellison, interview by author, Berkeley, 23 October 1992. See also the critique of the Craib et al. study in Benjamin A. Goldman and Michael Chappelle, "Is HIV = AIDS Wrong?" In These Times, 5 August 1992, 8-10. [BACK]

102. Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, The Golem: What Everyone Should Know about Science (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), 3. [BACK]

103. Steven Shapin, "Cordelia's Love: Credibility and the Social Studies of Studies," Perspectives on Science 3, no. 3 (1995): 255-275. [BACK]

104. Martin Delaney, "Evidence Does Not Back Duesberg's Views," San Francisco Chronicle, 4 September 1992, A-29 (op-ed). [BACK]

105. See Fujimura and Chou, "Dissent in Science." [BACK]

106. René Dubos, Mirage of Health: Utopias, Progress, and Biological Change (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), 86. [BACK]

107. "What Causes AIDS? A Second Look" (reported by Colman Jones, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Toronto), Ideas, 6-7 November 1991. Transcript published in 1992. [BACK]

108. Robert Gallo, interview by author, tape recording, Bethesda, Md., 3 November 1994. [BACK]

109. Robert S. Root-Bernstein, Rethinking AIDS: The Tragic Cost of Premature Consensus (New York: Free Press, 1993). For a more recent update, see Robert S. Root-Bernstein, "Five Myths about AIDS That Have Misdirected Research and Treatment," Genetica 95, no. 1-3 (1995): 111-132. [BACK]

110. John Lauritsen, The AIDS War: Propaganda, Profiteering and Genocide from the Medical-Industrial Complex (New York: Asklepios, 1993). [BACK]

111. Peter H. Duesberg, Inventing the AIDS Virus (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1996). [BACK]

112. David W. Dunlap, "Michael Callen, Singer and Expert on Coping with AIDS, Dies at 38," New York Times, 29 December 1993. [BACK]

113. Colin Macilwain, "AAAS Criticized over AIDS Sceptics' Meeting," Nature 369 (May 1994): 265; Rick Weiss, "And Now for Something Completely Different: Florida Physician Throws a Dramatic Jab at the Experts' View of AIDS," Washington Post, 1 November 1994, 7; Richard Stone, "Congressman Uncovers the HIV Conspiracy," Science 268 (14 April 1995): 191. [BACK]

114. Jon Cohen, "The Duesberg Phenomenon," Science 266 (9 December 1994): 1642-1649 (special news report). The article prompted eight pages of letters, published in the January 13 and January 20 issues. This article marked my own entry as an actor in the controversy: I was interviewed by Cohen about the sociological bases of the controversy and quoted in the text. For a critique of Cohen's article that also takes me to task, see Tom Bethell, "The Cohen Phenomenon," Reappraising AIDS 3 (April 1995). [BACK]

115. Cohen, "Duesberg Phenomenon," 1645, 1647, 1649. [BACK]

116. Billy Goodman, "A Controversy That Will Not Die: The Role of HIV in Causing AIDS," The Scientist, 20 March 1995, 1, 6, 7. Goodman had read my doctoral dissertation; the title of his article was borrowed from the title of this chapter in its earlier incarnation. [BACK]

117. Anthony Fauci, "Writing for My Sister Denise," AAAS Observer, 1 September 1989, 4. [BACK]

118. Harry M. Collins and Trevor J. Pinch, "The Construction of the Paranormal: Nothing Unscientific Is Happening," in On the Margins of Science: The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge, ed. Roy Wallis (Keele, England: Univ. of Keele Press, 1979), 237-270. [BACK]

119. Susan Leigh Star, Regions of the Mind: Brain Research and the Quest for Scientific Certainty (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1989), 140. [BACK]

120. See Brian Martin, Scientific Knowledge in Controversy: The Social Dynamics of the Flouridation Debate (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1991), esp. chapter 4 ("The Struggle over Credibility"). For similar credibility strategies, see Star, Regions of the Mind, 138-144. [BACK]

121. Martin, Scientific Knowledge in Controversy, 61, 62. [BACK]

122. Ibid., 89. [BACK]

123. Fumento, quoted in Tom Bethell, "Heretic," American Spectator, May 1992, 18. [BACK]

124. Martin, Scientific Knowledge in Controversy, 90. [BACK]

125. Michael C. Botkin, "The Great KS Debate," Bay Area Reporter, 29 August 1991, 19. [BACK]

126. These anecdotes were reported in Martin, Scientific Knowledge in Controversy, 93-98. [BACK]

127. Ibid., 101. [BACK]

128. Ibid. [BACK]

129. Celia Farber, "Fatal Distraction," Spin, June 1992, 84. [BACK]

130. Delaney, "Evidence Does Not Back Duesberg's Views," A-29. [BACK]

131. Anthony Fauci, "Writing for My Sister Denise." [BACK]

132. On scientists' difficulties in signaling degrees of consensus to the lay public, see Yaron Ezrahi, "The Authority of Science in Politics," in Science and Values: Patterns of Tradition and Change, ed. Arnold Thackray and Everett Mendelsohn (New York: Humanities Press, 1974), 215-251, esp. 222. On the media's tendency to portray scientific controversies as having "two sides, of somewhat comparable merit," see Rae Goodell, "The Role of the Mass Media in Scientific Controversies," in Scientific Controversies: Case Studies in the Resolution and Closure of Disputes in Science and Technology, ed. H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr. and Arthur L. Caplan (Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987), 585-597, quote from 589. [BACK]

133. Duesberg, interview. [BACK]

134. Ibid. [BACK]

135. Anne Karpf, Doctoring the Media: The Reporting of Health and Medicine (London: Routledge, 1988), 111. [BACK]

136. Goodell, "Role of the Mass Media in Scientific Controversies," 590. [BACK]

137. Karpf, Doctoring the Media, 111, describing David M. Rubin and Val Hendy, "Swine Influenza and the News Media," Annals of Internal Medicine 87 (December 1977): 769-774. [BACK]

138. Duesberg, interview. [BACK]

139. For Gallo's critiques of the press, see Robert Gallo, Virus Hunting (New York: Basic Books, 1991). [BACK]

140. Russell Schoch, "A Conversation with Peter Duesberg," California Monthly, April 1990, 8-11, quote from 9. [BACK]

141. "An AIDS Theory That Can Kill," San Francisco Examiner, 11 September 1992, A-26 (editorial). [BACK]

142. Celia Farber, "AIDS: Words from the Front," Spin, August 1992, 65-67. [BACK]

143. Duesberg, interview. [BACK]