In 1991, seven years after Robert Gallo’s May 1984 article in Science, Harvard microbiologist Dr. Charles Thomas organized the éminences grises of virology and immunology to formally register their objections to Gallo’s HIV hypothesis in an historical letter to Nature. The group was a Who’s Who of international scientific doyens and Nobel laureates, among them Dr. Walter Gilbert of Harvard; PCR inventor Kary Mullis; Yale mathematician Serge Lang (a member, and watchdog, of the National Academy of Sciences); Dr. Harry Rubin, professor of Cell Biology at UC Berkeley; Dr. Harvey Bialy, cofounder of Nature Biotechnology; Bernard Forscher, PhD, ret. editor of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; and many others.
The letter was only four sentences long:
It is widely believed by the general public that a retrovirus called HIV causes a group of diseases called AIDS. Many biomedical scientists now question this hypothesis. We propose a thorough reappraisal of the existing evidence for and against this hypothesis, to be conducted by a suitable independent group. We further propose that the critical epidemiological studies be devised and undertaken.2,3
It seemed like a reasonable request. These esteemed researchers were only asking for the open debate and investigation about an extremely consequential scientific assertion that had, somehow, never occurred. But in an early display of Dr. Fauci’s and Big Pharma’s combined power to control the medical journals, Nature declined to publish the letter. Nor would New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, or the Lancet. These journals rely on the pharmaceutical industry for upward of 90 percent of their revenues and seldom publish studies that threaten the Pharma paradigm. As Lancet editor Richard Horton has observed, “The journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry.”4 Dr. Fauci exercises direct influence on the content that appears in their journals. Control of peer-reviewed publishing is a vital ingredient for constructing orthodoxies.5
When Nature rejected the letter, Thomas and Bialy subsequently organized a consortium, The Group for Scientific Reappraisal of HIV/AIDS Hypothesis, and in 1992, Thomas called it “. . . tantamount to criminal negligence”6 for scientists to remain silent. “Of the fifty-three who had signed by June 1992, twelve had M.D.’s and twenty-five had Ph.D.’s. Twenty of the fifty-three gave academic affiliations with departments like physiology, biochemistry, medicine, pharmacology, toxicology, and physics.”7 Over 2,600 people, including three Nobel laureates, Walter Gilbert, Kary Mullis and two-time winner Linus Pauling, and 188 reputable PhDs, added their signatures. (“RethinkingAIDS” website lists more than two thousand distinguished members: www.rethinkingaids.com.)8, 9
But the steady flow of money from NIAID was already annealing Gallo’s viral hypothesis into ironbound orthodoxy, and those dissenting voices met the hardened steel of fortified institutional resistance. Tony Fauci’s loosened purse strings had launched the HIV gold rush, and the government virologists and pharmaceutical PIs had circled their stagecoaches around Gallo’s sketchy hypothesis and were lined up for handouts at the NIAID chuckwagon.
“They’ve got to hold onto HIV. Why?” observed Dr. Charles Thomas dolefully. “To hold on to their funding.”10
Scratching his head, Kary Mullis commented, “There’s something wrong here. It’s got to be financial.”11 He explained, “The mystery of that damn virus,” he says, “has been generated by the $2 billion a year they spend on it. You take any other virus, and spend $2 billion, and you can make up some great mysteries about it, too.”12
Peter Duesberg
Among the scientists who added their name to the later version of the letter was an iconoclastic German-born prodigy with twinkling eyes, a biting wit, a boyish face, and a ready smile.
In the 1970s and 1980s, molecular biologist Professor Peter Duesberg (born December 2, 1936) was a demigod of molecular biology and among the world’s best-known and highly respected scientists. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) generously supported his virology and cancer research. In 1986, NIH awarded Duesberg its special Cancer Fellowship, as well as the highly coveted Outstanding Investigator Grant, which the agency reserves for the top scientists in the country. NIH designed the seven-year grant to allow gifted scientists to push the boundaries of their specialties by removing the pressures of grant writing. The elite National Academy of Sciences inducted Duesberg into its Scientist Hall of Fame at the age of fifty, making him one of its youngest members ever.
At the University of California, Berkeley, Duesberg became the first to map the genetic structure of retroviruses like HIV, making him among the world’s most renowned retrovirologists. A retrovirus is a primitive life form that has no capacity to replicate on its own, as is true of all viruses. The retrovirus injects its RNA into an existing cell, where an enzyme called reverse transcriptase converts viral RNA into DNA, which is then inserted (or spliced) into the host cell’s DNA. Virologists generally believe that retroviruses are harmless, even beneficial, in a symbiotic relationship with humans during three billion years of evolution, providing mobile DNA blocks in the human genome. In fact, many of our genes first entered our genome as retroviruses.13,14 Some 8–10 percent of human DNA is retroviral,” says Dr. David Rasnick, “That’s a hell of a lot.”15
By 1970, at thirty-three, Duesberg won acclaim for having discovered the first cancer-causing gene. Duesberg and his fellow virologist Peter Vogt discovered the so-called “oncogene” inside a retrovirus that appeared to cause cancer. Duesberg’s discovery gave rise to the “mutant gene theory” and unleashed a boom in a new discipline of cancer research. Colleagues expected Duesberg to win the Nobel Prize.