Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Service, Grant Application

Principal lnvesf ator/P rain Director Last, first, middle:

Duesberg, Peter H.

homosexuals and heterosexuals, were homosexuals who had used nitrites in addition to other
recreational drugs. Moreover, "heavy" nitrite users had twice as much AIDS as "light" users (Ascher
et al., 1993; Duesberg, 1993b; Duesberg, 1993a).
4) During the last 6 to 8 years the use of nitrite inhalants among male homosexuals decreased,
e.g. from 58% in 1984 to 27% in 1991 in San Francisco (Lesbian & Gay Substance Abuse Planning
Group, 1991b). In parallel, the incidence of Kaposi's sarcoma among American AIDS patients
decreased from a high of 50% in 1981 (Haverkos, 1988), to 37% in 1983 (Jaffe et al., 1983a), to a
low of 10% in 1992 (Centers for Disease Control, 1993). It follows that the incidence of Kaposi's
sarcoma is proportional to the number of nitrite users (Haverkos, 1988).
5) After the discovery of HIV, 5 out of 6 HIV-free male homosexuals from New York with
Kaposi's sarcoma reported the use of nitrite inhalants (Friedman-Kien et al., 1990). Soon after,
another 6 cases of HIV-free Kaposi's sarcoma were reported in an HIV-free "high risk population"
from New York (Safai et al., 1991). This suggests that nitrites may be sufficient for AIDS.
6) The following cases also demonstrate that nitrites may be sufficient for AIDS. A 44-yearold, HIV-free homosexual man from Germany developed Kaposi's sarcoma after he "had used nitrite
inhalants for about 10 years" (Marquart et al., 1991). In 1981, an English male homosexual with a
"history of amyl nitrite inhalation", hepatitis B, gonorrhea and syphilis, was diagnosed with Kaposi's
sarcoma. In 1984 he was found to be free of HIV, but in 1986 he became antibody-positive (Lowdell
and Glaser, 1989). Likewise, Kaposi's sarcoma was diagnosed in a 40-year-old, promiscuous HIVfree homosexual from England who admitted "frequent use of amyl nitrite." (Archer et al., 1989).
7) A prospective study from Canada identified immunodeficiency in 33 out of 166 HIV-free
homosexual men (Marion et al., 1989). The study did not mention drug consumption, but a later
report on homosexual men with AIDS from the same cohort documented that all had been using nitrites
at a rate of either more or less than 20 "hits" of per month (Archibald et al., 1992). Likewise, Lang et
al. described a steady decline of T4-cells in 37 homosexual men in San Francisco, from 1200 per pl
prior to HIV infection to less than 600 at the time of infection (Lang et al., 1989). Although
recreational drug use and AZT were not mentioned, other studies of the same cohort of homosexual
men from San Francisco described extensive use of recreational drugs (Darrow et al., 1987; Moss,
1987; Ascher, et. al 1993) and AZT (Lang et al., 1991). About 450 (16%) of 2795 HIV-free,
homosexual American men who had used a multiplicity of recreational drugs, above all (7 1%) nitrites,
had acquired immunodeficiency, i. e. having less than 600 T4-lymphocytes per l (Kaslow et al.,
1989).
e) Conclusions. The high correlations between nitrite use and AIDS, and the evidence foi
HIV-free AIDS-suggest that nitrites are necessary and perhaps even sufficient causes of AIDS. Much
of the uncertainty about nitrite toxicity in the literature probably reflects a failure to quantitate the
cumulative dosage of drug consumption (Haverkos and Drotman, 1990; Duesberg, 1993a; Duesberg,
1993b). This is critical because with drugs 'the dose is the poison'.
Thus, to determine whether drugs cause ADS, it is not enough to correlate drug usage, at any given
time, with AIDS. Such correlations fail to distinguish between a beginner and a long-term drug addict.
Instead, correlations with the cumulative lifetime dose of drugs and AIDS, must be established. (By
contrast a single exposure to a microbe can be sufficient for pathogenicity, because microbes are selfreplicating poisons (Duesberg, 1993b)). In view of this, we plan to pay particular attention to the
cumulative dose of nitrites to be administered to the animals, and cells in culture, that we propose to
study for nitrite toxicity.
3. Preliminary studies

Our proposal is based on preliminary and apparently inconclusive nitrite inhalation studies of
mice conducted by others in the mid-1980s (Haverkos and Dougherty, 1988a), and one recent study
PHS 398 (Rev.9/91) Page 27
Number pages consecutively at the bottom throughout the application. Do not use suffixes such as 3a, 3b.