ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 3, 1995 TAG: 9512040094
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: LARRY NEUMEISTER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DESPITE DAMAGE TO HIS CAREER, Peter Duesberg stands by his belief that drug abuse - not the human immunodeficiency virus - usually causes AIDS. Others fear his efforts will cause harm.
Peter Duesberg was in an elite group of scientists who competed for Nobel Prizes and cornered most major grants - until he announced his belief that HIV does not cause AIDS.
The theory, published in a science journal in 1987, flung Duesberg's career into a tailspin, turning the tenured University of California, Berkeley professor into a pariah.
It was a rapid fall for a member of the National Academy of Sciences, winner of a 1985 Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Institutes of Health and one of the world's leading authorities on retroviruses, a family that includes the AIDS virus.
Now, Duesberg says, he has a chance at redemption. But others say that chance could lead to further devastation.
Duesberg's book, ``Inventing the AIDS Virus,'' co-written with a former student, Bryan J. Ellison, will be shipped to stores nationwide in February by Regnery Publishing Inc.
Its conclusion, which has been thoroughly and repeatedly rejected by mainstream AIDS researchers, is that the identification of HIV as the AIDS culprit was hastily reached and never properly challenged, ignoring the possibility that AIDS usually results from drug abuse.
Phyllis Kanki, a virologist at the Harvard AIDS Institute, said the attention Duesberg's theory receives ``could impede the progress of education and intervention programs.''
``It's a little depressing for those of us working in AIDS research to think we are going back to square one and arguing what seems like a ridiculous argument about the cause of AIDS,'' she said.
German-born Duesberg, 58, says his book is his ``best chance for a public hearing.'' The book ``is my best hope now of getting a lot of people to reconsider, rethink and possibly say: `We should give Duesberg a chance.'''
The book is ``not a helpful thing, that's for sure,'' said Peter Drotman, assistant director for public health for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
``If it is widely read and believed and people act on the messages he provides, that would be injurious to the health of others,'' he said.
``Science is not meant to be conformism and majority rule,'' Duesberg said. ``Innovation does not come from a majority in science. It always comes from someone considered an outsider.''
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Peter Duesberg Criticizes HIV researchby CNB