[Letter to Colleagues from Peter Duesberg]

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
BERKELEY * DAVIS * IRVINE * LOS ANGELES * RIVERSIDE * SAN DIEGO * SAN FRANCISCO o SANTA BARBARA * SANTA CRJZ
May 21, 1991
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology
c/o Stanley/Donner Administrative Services Unit
229 Stanley Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
FAX: [phone]
Dr. Lawrence Bogorad, Chairman
Editorial Board
Proceedings Office
National Academy of Sciences
2139 Wisconsin Ave., N. W. Room 201
Washington, D. C. 20007
Dear Dr. Bogorad,
It is my impression that the four anonymous reviews you solicited
have unfairly rejected my paper "The role of drugs in the origin of AIDS". All
four reviewers express a strong bias for Robert Gallo's HIV-AIDS hypothesis.
Reviewer #1 even expands the AIDS definition to accommodate HIV as the
cause of non-AIDS diseases of drug addicts. Those reviewers try to discredit
2 Ve my com " othesis with their own scientific and political opinions, but
eniely fai it w ith facts.
Reviewer #1 says "Much of the excess mortality could be ascribed to
HIV infection even though the diseases did not fit into the official CDC
definition of AIDS." And "... Duesberg's paper... fosters an inaccurate
and potentially degrading picture of AIDS patients.. one is further tempted
to blame the victims." Obviously, these are political concerns that do not
belong in a review of a scientific paper.
Nevertheless, reviewer #1 is the only one of the four to address flaws
in the data of my paper with references, as for example, numerical mistakes of
data from a paper published in Science in 1988. These mistakes have been
corrected in the revised draft of my paper accompanying this letter. I have
also followed this reviewer's advice to cite the mutation-induced resistance of
HIV by long-term treatment with AZT. Indeed, this point supports my
concerns against the indefinite use of AZT on HIV-carriers. I have also