HIV and AIDS: Questions of Scientific and Journalistic Responsibility

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HIV AND AIDS

When ABC's Nightline approached Mullis about participating
in a documentary on himself, he instead urged them to focus their
attention on the HIV debate. "That's a much more important
story," he told the producers, who up to that point had never
acknowledged the controversy. In the end, Nightline ran a twopart series, the first on Kary Mullis, the second on the HIV
debate. Mullis was hired by ABC for a two-week period, to act as
their scientific consultant and direct them to sources. The show
was superb, and represented a historic turning point, possibly
even the end of the seven-year media blackout on the HIV
debate...
Celia Farber also mentioned the hypothesis that Kary Mullis has
concerning the breakdown of the immune system in some of the risk
groups: "Kary Mullis hypothesizes that AIDS is not caused by any
single organism, but by prolonged exposure to an overwhelming number
of distinct organisms, which individually may be harmless."
In November 1994, SPIN published a four-page article on Harry
Haverkos, who was chairman of the NIDA meeting. I quote from this
article:
Surrounded by stacks of medical journals in his cramped office,
Haverkos gives four main reasons why he links KS with nitrite
use. First, there is the statistical connection. Repeated use of
poppers and incidence of KS have been confined to gay men.
"About 96 percent of Kaposi's cases occur in gay men, who make up
65 percent of all AIDS cases," he says. Twice as many whites as
blacks use poppers -- and twice as many get KS...
Second, there is the lack of a firm HIV connection to KS. No
cases of KS have been reported among blood-transfusion
recipients where the blood donor himself later developed the
cancer...
The third reason Haverkos suspects a nitrite connection to KS is
that the disease is caused by an abnormal growth of blood
vessels, and nitrites act on blood vessels...
Finally, Haverkos says, "The KS lesions are most common on
the face, nose, and chest. If you're inhaling vapors, that is where
you will have the highest concentrations." Put those points
together, he says, and "you don't have to be a rocket scientist to
from the scientific one.