[Letter to Colleagues from Peter Duesberg]

nor the lack of a few specific items of information." Upon appeal of Bogorad's
decision to Dr. Frank Press, the President of the Academy, Bogorad stood by
his rejection, explaining in a letter to Harry Rubin (March 31, 1992) that it was
"for very good reasons, although you and Dr. Duesberg disagree with the
validity of these reasons."
It is my opinion that Bogorad's rejection of my paper reflects a bias
against alternatives for the HIV-AIDS hypothesis of Dr. Robert Gallo and is
not based on verifiable facts or logic. Therefore I now appeal Bogorad's
decision on the following grounds:
1) A heavily biased review procedure that a) entirely ignored the five
favorable reviews provided for my paper by the Academy member Rubin and
the four experts solicited by him and b) refused to accept any response or
defense against the anonymous reviews selected by Bogorad.
2) The failure of Bogorad and his anonymous reviewers to justify their
rejection of my paper with even one uncorrectable flaw in facts or logic. I
assume that the purpose of an honest review is to identify errors in facts and
logic, not to serve as unappealable opinion against publication.
3) I appear to be unfairly singled out for editorial review because I hold
what is currently a minority view on AIDS. Two of the three AIDS papers I
have written for the Proceedings, "Human immunodeficiency virus and
AIDS: Correlation but not causation" PNAS 86, 755-764 (1989) and "AIDS
epidemiology: Inconsistencies with human immunodeficiency virus and
with infectious disease" PNAS 88, 1575-1579 (1991) were only published after
extended and fierce editorial review. The third, which proposed an
alternative hypothesis, has been blocked by Bogorad from publication.
I have asked many colleagues but have not heard of even one instance
that an HIV-AIDS paper from another Academician or communicated by an
Academician was ever subjected to special editorial review. I have also never
received an HIV-AIDS paper for review from the Editor and my requests
whether there is ever a special review of HIV-AIDS papers remained
unanswered. Indeed I was told by the Managing Editor Frances Zwanzig that
besides me only Linus Pauling had been denied publication in the
Proceedings in recent history.
4) The exceptional and unjustified exclusion of an Academy member
in good standing to publish in the Proceedings in his field of expertise, e.g.,
retroviruses and drugs. I have a PhD in chemistry and have worked with
retroviruses since 1964.
Finally, I appeal Bogorad's decision in the name of the academic
freedom and neutrality for which our Academy stands, and because of the