[Letter to Colleagues from Peter Duesberg]

old diseases of hemophiliacs and other recipients of transfusions and of the
general American population are called AIDS because they. coincide with
HIV infection. This reflects the authors lack of familiarity with the medical
problems of these groups.
Dr. Duesberg might be interested in the following figures. courtesy of CDC:
As of September 30. 1991 there had been 4205 cases of AIDS in adult
individuals who had received transfusions before the introduction of the
HIV screen in 1985: there have been 18 cases in people who had received
transfusions after that date. The corresponding numbers in children are
284 and 2.
It seems to me that Duesberg has had plenty of opportunity to try,
through the pages of PNAS, to convince the world that HIV does not
cause AIDS. The present paper is, I believe, totally lacking in
cogency and contains a number of errors of fact and of logic. It
does not belong in print, much less in PNAS.
The reviews submitted with the manuscript do not deal in any
substantive way with the content of the paper. Incidentally, I
note that of the four individuals who have been involved in the
review and submission of the manuscript, three were thanked for
their help with the previous paper.