By Zoë Corbyn
Controversial researcher Peter Duesberg has been cleared of wrongdoing following formal complaints made after he and others published a paper arguing that there is "as yet no proof that HIV causes AIDS."
Duesberg, who is well known for denying the link between HIV and AIDS, escaped censure from the University of California, Berkeley, after an investigation upheld his academic freedom and found no clear evidence that he broke faculty rules in publishing the paper.
A letter dated May 28 from Sheldon Zedeck, vice-provost for academic affairs and faculty welfare, to Duesberg effectively clears him of any wrongdoing. It states that there was "insufficient evidence" available to pursue any disciplinary action against him, although it stresses that the investigation was not concerned with the "accuracy or validity of the article."
Duesberg told Nature that he felt "officially exonerated" by the outcome but was disappointed that Berkeley had not dismissed the allegations sooner. "There was no basis for a misconduct charge," he says.
The professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, who won international acclaim for his work on cancer genes in the 1970s before focusing on AIDS, says that his detractors will now find it more difficult to make a case against him. "Now they will have to find something else ... maybe my parking permits," he suggests.
Contentious hypothesis
Berkeley launched an investigation last November, questioning whether Duesberg had violated the university's code of conduct when submitting an article to the journal Medical Hypotheses, which at the time did not peer review its papers.
The article argued that there is "as yet no proof that HIV causes AIDS" and described claims that the virus had killed millions as "unconfirmed." Duesberg had previously submitted the manuscript to the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, where one reviewer warned that he could face misconduct charges were the paper to be published.
The warning concerned the alleged cherry picking of results and the failure to declare a conflict of interest for co-author David Rasnick, previously an employee of Matthias Rath. Rath sells vitamin pills as remedies for AIDS. Rasnick has denied any conflict of interest and says that he has had no connection with Rath since 2006.
The paper's publication led to a storm of protest from scientists, and retrospective peer review later led to its being permanently withdrawn. The journal's editor was sacked and publisher Elsevier vowed to make changes to Medical Hypotheses, including introducing peer review.
Two formal complaints were also lodged with Berkeley, between them alleging that Duesberg had made false claims in the paper and accusing him of failing to declare Rasnick's alleged conflict of interest. One complaint came from Nathan Geffen, treasurer of the South Africa-based Treatment Action Campaign--which campaigns for the rights of people with HIV/AIDS. The other complainant has remained anonymous.
Geffen told Nature that he submitted his complaint because he believed Duesberg had behaved unethically. "I would like them to have taken action against him but I understand their position. I am willing to accept that this is a grey area in terms of their code," he says.
He adds that having "insufficient evidence" to proceed is not the same as exoneration. "This is anything but an exoneration."
Berkeley spokesman Robert Sanders confirmed that the investigation into Duesberg had now concluded.
"Academic freedom protects a professor's right to engage in scholarly research, even if it is controversial. The university relies on the scholarly peer-review process, rather than disciplinary procedures, for evaluating the value of scientific work," he says.
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12 Comments
Add CommentWhile it might be interesting to make the case that the connection between the two has never been proven, for purely Sophist reasons, publishing in a medical journal can only serve to encourage HIV sufferers to forgo medical treatment and lead to needless suffering and deaths.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHe should be stripped of his credentials and relegated to publishing in the National Enquirer.
Unfortunately for Universities and Journals alike the term "conflict of interest" is usually restricted to financial gain. The articles were not just "controversial" but clearly focused on trying to deceive the reader into believing there is no connection between HIV, AIDS and efficacy of antiretrovirals. This position is held by Duesberg and others in a cult-like fashion, and he owes most of his fame to this and not to his truly academic work. Conflict of interest should be also extended to trying to promote ideologies, religious beliefs, personal admiration, etc. even without a financial gain. I think he has a clear record of trying to become famous by portraying himself as a genius that can see what hundreds of thousands of scientists cannot, and a hero by uncovering a huge conspiracy by Big Pharma. He and his ego did have a lot to gain personally, and clearly this was the source of the outrageous bias that led to the publishers to withdraw the paper. Perhaps UC Berkeley had limited means to act due to the limited scope of the concept of "interest"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho knows about U.C. Berkley these days - they're the center for the invention of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and for Yoo's Torture Memos - two of the Right-wings most drastic and divisive tools. I think it's important to not go around swiftly stripping credentials from people - even if what they publish is blatantly untrue. If they've somehow managed to accumulate enough information to support a case - whether it's cherry picked or not - they should have their say. I don't think anyone is out to make themselves known as the most reviled person in science. I'm interested as to what the paper says - though from my study of HIV - the mechanisms of its progression into AIDS seem pretty clear-cut assuming that which I've been presented on paper is true. None of us have done the physical research to indeed verify that GP120 binds to CD4.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat being said - there are conspiracies - to always dismiss any hint of a conspiracy as fallacious plays into the hands of people who do conspire.
I think the like between HIV and AIDS is pretty strong however. HIV infects cell, HIV lies dormate, Cell transcribes HIV, CD4 cell presents polypeptides on MHC II, CD8 kills CD4 and or CD4 is lysed by reproduced HIV virons. CD4 count falls, antibodies cannot be reproduced in response to pathogens, pathogens go unrecognized, pathogens kill human. I don't really see where there's room for debate.
And, NEVER put a conspiracy beyond Big Pharma Keo. There isn't a soul alive running these companies that cares about human life more than the bottom line. That is necessitated by economics. It's not really something that one can get morally outraged about, since science is extremely expensive.
That being said - I think the guy is an idiot for saying HIV doesn't cause AIDS.
@bloomingdedalus. The point in case was that he did not "managed to accumulate enough information to support a case", since the paper was rejected whenever it was peer reviewed (twice), and only got published by a single decision of an editor (with no experience in either virology or AIDS). Probably hundreds of thousands died prematurely because he personally and others convinced South African health officials (Chigwedere et al. JAIDS, 2008), so trying to bypass normal peer review to get his ideas across for personal gain, is highly unethical, and therefore should be considered for amonestation by his employers. To say the least.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbout conspiracies, yes, they do happen. But one thing is hiding the data from a few dozen deaths (like the Vioxx scandal), and another is suggesting that all of us that study HIV disease -and we number in the hundreds of thousands worldwide- are either too stupid to interpret our own data, or corrupt enough to allow millions to be poisoned by useless or even toxic drugs. The billionaires from Big Tobacco can only pop up one or two papers a year to support their products, but it is unconcievable that the 50,000+ papers a year on HIV-AIDS are the product of a Big Pharma conspiracy.
So if "having their say" killed thousands, and "their say" was based on an absurd delusion, motivated by personal promotion, consciously omitted information relevant to the motives for publishing and seeking to bypass the peer review system, then yes, they should be stripped of their job as a scientist. Swiftly.
Unlike other diseases that are irrefutably linked to a virus (Scientific Method), it appears this has not been established with HIV / AIDS. Please publish this "irrefutable link" and shut this Doctor/Professor of Microbiology up!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe more important question about AIDS is not what causes it but why 30 years has gone by without a cure.....just expensive treatments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA cure means billions will be saved in health care costs....and a great misery which has affected humankind for too long will be history!
I have always felt that HIV did not cause AIDS. I have known people who had HIV but they also had Sickle Cell Anemia is why they passed away. They alway report that the death was due to complications due to having AIDS. The deficiency itself does not kill people. Opportunistice infections do which are in and of itself not AIDS or HIV.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is totally true. I am one who is affected and would love to see a cure after 25 years of not knowing what is next around the corner. Because I have lived this way for so long just taking a triple drug therapy, I am very leary about what I really do have. I know when i stop taking the medication I feel like "crapola". I have to take the medication so that I feel good and can function. Like in the movie "Shawshank Redemption" it was time to get along with living or with dying and I chose the former.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn science, is it right to decide that, after some point, when a given "built social consensus" about the cause of a disease is attained, questioning must stop ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy is some people so infuriated when a scientist does what he is supposed to do? To ask questions, to keep testing the hypothesis, and upon inconsistencies, to suggest alternative hypotheses that he believes may explain the empiric data? The controverse is inherent to science.
I read the paper published and retracted by Medical Hypotheses and as a scientist I would have benefited more from answers to questions posed by the authors about the epidemiology of AIDS than from demonstrations of outrage best fitted to faith than to science.
Scientists, one would think, would focus on the merits of the hypothesis, and not the hypothesizer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe issue is whether HIV has ever been proven to cause AIDS. It seems no one is willing to provide data that proves that HIV causes AIDS.
The HIV pioneers, Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier, have not made such a claim. Gallo said it was a possible cause. Montagnier suggested it could be a contributing cause, but could not cause the disease by itself. If either has changed his mind, I am unaware, as well as being unaware of research that proves that HIV causes AIDS, using the same standards that we've used for other pathogenic viruses: Koch's postulates.
We hear the assertion "HIV, the cause of AIDS" almost daily in the news media.
Can anyone provide a reference to prove that Duesberg is wrong and HIV indisputably is THE cause of AIDS?
The University of California-Berkeley must also be unaware of such research, because it dropped its investigation against Peter Duesberg without prejudice as to the accuracy or validity of the article.
Dr. Deusberg asks questions that HIV researchers fail to answer: why is there no vaccine yet? why, after 10 years of living with HIV without using ART, are people still healthy? how is it that the body builds up an antibody to the viral infection--with no visible illness to go with the infection--and yet the medical community says it takes 10 years for the disease to express itself?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe're living through the scourge of "peer-reviewed" science. It is the scientific equivalent of political correctness--and dangerous in both sectors. Look at what's happening to the journal that dared to publish Duesberg's paper: it's now going to be forcibly made "peer-reviewed". Is that like castration?
AZT: a drug designed to kill cells is given as a "cure". Only educated people could be that dumb!
The only reason for someone to become "infuriated" when a scientist does his job is because that scientist is onto something.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf Peter Duesberg's theories were truly ridiculous and wrong, no one would care. The fact that so many people care a great deal just lends credence to Duesberg's argument.