I recommend Tom Bethell's article in the current (June) American Spectator,
             part one of a two-part series on Duesberg's cancer theory. Bethell does a
             good job of explaining the work for the general reader. It is not yet on
             line. - Phil

             The Washington Post, June 4, 2000, Sunday, Pg. B05
             HEADLINE: Why Science Can't Cope With Mbeki
             BYLINE: Steven Epstein

              Political leaders are expected to know a little about a lot of things,
             and even when they don't, they often tell us what they think anyway. Yet,
             for all their lack of shyness about expressing their views, few are the
             times in which politicians hold forth on questions of scientific fact.
             World leaders aren't presumed to have detailed opinions about, say, the
             quality of the evidence presented in a pathbreaking article in the latest
             issue of Nature. When it comes to science, it seems, politicians are in
             much the same boat as the rest of us: disqualified from comment by virtue
             of a lack of relevant expertise.
              That accounts for some of the surprise that greeted South African
             President Thabo Mbeki's unanticipated foray into AIDS research. But Mbeki's
             comments, expressed in a recent fivepage letter to President Clinton, did
             more than raise a few eyebrows. Mbeki wondered whether the knowledge about
             the AIDS epidemic generated by Western scientists could even be applied to
             an African setting. And he seemed to align himself with a group of
             marginalized scientists he had stumbled upon via the Internet and then
             personally contacteddissenters who maintain that HIV is not the cause of
             AIDS, and that the drugs prescribed to treat HIV infection actually cause
             the symptoms of the disease.
              This was not a comment on an obscure technical debate. This was an
             intervention into a domain of science where truth matters with a
             vengeance, where getting it right has consequences that can be measured in
             billions of dollars and millions of human lives. And certainly Mbeki's
             arguments have implications for South Africa, where his government has
             resisted spending money on expensive antiviral drugs like AZT that, if the
             dissenters are right, shouldn't be consumed at all.
              When Mbeki visited the United States last month, his support of the HIV
             dissidents was the dominant media frame. Scientists and physicians
             throughout the country bristled with indignation, and some of them called
             for a boycott of the 13th International AIDS Conference, scheduled to take
             place in South Africa next month.
              The ferocity of the response reflected scientists' frustration at the
             apparent resurrection of a debate many thought had long since been put to
             rest. In the late '80s, AIDS researchers began responding to the arguments
             of Peter Duesberg, a formerly wellrespected professor of biochemistry and
             molecular biology at the University of California at Berkeley and a member
             of the National Academy of Sciences. Duesberg's argument that HIV has not
             been proven to cause AIDS has since been the subject of hundreds of
             articles and letters in scientific journals and the media, and he has
             gathered a small number of scientists (including one Nobel Prize winner)
             and a few advocacy groups behind his banner.
              Support for the dissenters has waxed and waned, sliding into the
             background whenever the mainstream approach seems to be showing a payoff.
             Ever since the new and more effective antiviral drugs first became
             available in U.S. pharmacies in 1996, the media and the public have shown a
             diminished interest in Duesberg's arguments, and medical authorities may
             reasonably have concluded that they had finally vanquished their nemesisor,
             at least, that no one was paying him much mind. Now comes the Mbeki affair
             to resurrect the argument.
              Scientists and government officials are right to worry about the
             potential costs of the South African president's statements. But what is
             the best way to respond to Mbeki, or indeed to any nonexpert who endorses
             contrarian scientific positions? The problem is that to pose the question
             dismissively"Why don't those ignorant people simply accept the conventional
             wisdom endorsed by the vast majority of experts?"misses an important point:
             Throughout the history of the AIDS epidemic nonexperts have challenged
             expert pronouncements about AIDSnot always for the better.
              Patients, sometimes scouring the Internet much like Mbeki, have
             confronted their own doctors with printouts of cuttingedge research that
             the physicians didn't always know about. Activists, with no formal
             schooling in virology or statistics but with a hardwon, seatofthepants
             grasp of scientific principles, have pressed for changes in the design of
             clinical trials that have led to the enrolling of more patients. People are
             becoming less inclined to embrace an unthinking obedience to the authority
             of experts; the very boundaries between nonscientists and experts are
             becoming harder to pin down. At least in areas like medical research, where
             scientists pronounce on topics as intimate as our own bodies, we should
             expectand, I would argue, respectthe active participation of the
             uncredentialed. In this regard, simply to dismiss Mbeki's foray into
             medical topics is problematic and unhelpful.
              It's risky to generalize too much from the case of Mbeki, who is
             responding to a very particular set of political and economic constraints.
             Among them, of course, are the global inequities that place medical
             treatments for illnesses such as AIDSeven after the recent 80 percent
             reduction in the cost of antiviralsbeyond the reach of most of the world's
             population. Still, because ambivalence about deferring to expert judgment
             is now so widespread, it is important to consider the obstacles that stand
             in the way of developing more productive relationships between experts and
             the rest of us. Here are three of those obstacles:
              When scientific controversies become matters of public debate, claims
             about how such controversies should be resolved often get mixed up with
             arguments about free speech and its suppression. Mbeki, for example,
             compared the HIV dissenters with victims of the apartheid regime, who were
             silenced because the established authority believed that their views were
             dangerous. Duesberg's supporters in this country have often compared him
             with Galileo, who was brought before the Inquisition and silenced in the
             17th century for espousing the thenheretical view that the Earth revolved
             around the sun. But every scientific controversy has winners and losers,
             and not all those on the losing end are victims of persecution, nor will
             they inevitably be revealed someday as a Galileo. To be sure, sometimes the
             scientific mainstream does need to be pressured to listen and respond to an
             opposing view. (This may have been the case in the late '80s, when Duesberg
             first began publishing his critiques.) But sometimes, when scientists stop
             responding to a challenger, it's because there really is nothing more to be
             said.
              Second, the claim that a dissident theory is being ignored by the
             mainstream is often connected to a presupposition that scientific
             controversies ought to be easily resolved. Surely, the argument goes, there
             must be a test or experiment that can settle the matter once and for all.
             But as sociological studies show, sometimes the very design of the
             definitive experiment is part of what is up for grabs in a controversy: The
             two sides cannot agree on what this experiment would look like. Sometimes
             the presumably definitive experiment is conducted, but its results are
             challenged by those who claim it was not properly carried out. As such
             controversies drag on and become public, the media begin ranking the tokens
             of credibility of the participants. Reporters sometimes place an undue
             emphasis on certain very public markers of scientific status, such as Nobel
             Prizes, and provide inadequate clues for readers to assess the legitimate
             authority of scientists to speak on specific scientific topics. And the
             journalistic norm of balance may impel reporters to present controversies
             as having two sides, even in cases when the vast majority of scientists
             stand on one of the sides. All these factors prolong a controversy, while
             giving credence to the view that the challengers of orthodoxy are not being
             given their day in court.
              Third, the very existence of ongoing scientific controversy on a topic
             that ordinary people care about often fuels distrust of science, to the
             extent that people imagine science to be a producer of certainty.
             Scientists themselves know better: They recognize that most new knowledge
             is provisionalbut they often profess absolute confidence in their findings,
             because they believe this is what the public expects of them. The problem
             is that when scientific findings appear to be contradictorywhen this week's
             study concludes that eggs or wine are bad for you but next week's study
             suggests the oppositepeople throw up their hands and declare the scientific
             enterprise to be bankrupt. Or, when someone like Duesberg points out the
             failure of a reigning theory to account for every piece of evidence, some
             people assume that the theory must therefore be tossed out. The more that
             scientists persist in overclaiming, and the more that people demand
             absolute certainty, the more distrust of science is likely to escalate, and
             relations between scientists and nonscientists will become ever more fraught.
              Scientists and nonscientists alike remain mired in bad habits that make
             it hard to respond productively to incidents like Mbeki's letter.
             Addressing those habits will not solve the vast problems caused by the AIDS
             epidemic, but doing so would make it easier to confront such problems
             directly and effectively.

              Steven Epstein teaches the sociology of medicine and science at the
             University of California, San Diego. He is the author of "Impure Science:
             AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge" (University of California
             Press).
 

             http://www.aidsmyth.com For cutting edge, up to date information 
             concerning the AIDS myth.

             http://www.magnusnews.com Gay and Lesbian news without the fluff. 
             Some adult content.

             http://www.aliveandwell.org Highly suggested reading: What If 
             Everything You Thought You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong? by Christine 
             Maggiore.

             http://www.healsf.org Health Education AIDS Liaison: A Healthy Alternative.

             http://www.aids-statistics.com/ AIDS Statistics.

             http://www.actupsf.com, http://www.surviveaids.com For those 
             questioning HIV and AIDS.