Wary of ruining their careers, all his grad students abandoned Duesberg. The university warned them that working with Duesberg would make them pariahs. All scientific conferences disinvited him; prominent colleagues demonstrated their rectitude by publicly declaring that they would decline invitations to any conference that included Duesberg.
One of his Berkeley colleagues complimented Duesberg lavishly in a private interview with journalist Celia Farber.38 The colleague praised his integrity, his genius, his kindness, and his intelligence. She protested his shoddy treatment by the university and the scientific establishment, but she insisted that she did not want to be identified in Farber’s story, explaining that she feared retribution.
Another Berkeley colleague from the Donner Lab explained to Farber the general hesitancy about Duesberg among the faculty: “Peter may be right about HIV. But there’s an industry now.”39
The scientific press banished Duesberg from publishing. Nature editor John Maddox himself wrote a theatrical editorial stating that Duesberg, by his heresy, had forfeited the standard scientific publishing practice “Right of Reply.”40 Maddox invited Duesberg’s colleagues to slander the virologist without fear of response. Anti-Dues-berg ambuscades became pro forma in each new edition of Nature. Bialy’s biography of Duesberg renders this written record in vivid, often hilarious detail.41 Even the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences’s (PNAS) journal, where members are always invited to publish, crushed a Duesberg paper on HIV after he spent over a year revising and resubmitting it to meet their various editing requests.
Colleagues reckless enough to defend Duesberg found themselves in malodour. The virologist Harry Rubin, himself a member of the Academy, suffered toxic vitriol and career injury after he intervened vainly with PNAS to get Duesberg’s paper published. In 1992, Duesberg’s paper became the second one in the PNAS’s 128-year history to be blocked from publication.42 (The other was written by Linus Pauling.)
“Duesberg’s problem was one that transcended science: It was career protection to partake in his bullying and degradation,” said Farber. “The Fauci serf scientists were driven by fear that if they did not denounce Duesberg in sufficiently disgusted tones, and very publicly, they would themselves soon be punished by Fauci, possibly defunded, or worse.”
The medical cartel dangled the prizes of redemption and reinstatement before Duesberg if he would only agree to reform. In 1994, a high-ranking NIH geneticist, Dr. Stephen O’Brien, called Duesberg and said he urgently needed to see him about a professional matter. O’Brien flew in from Bethesda the next day, and the two met at the opera in San Francisco. After some small talk about the good old days, O’Brien pulled a manuscript from the inside pocket of his tuxedo. Headlined “HIV Causes AIDS: Koch’s Postulates Fulfilled,” it had three very incongruous names at the bottom: Stephen O’Brien, William Blattner, and Peter Duesberg.43
Nature editor John Maddox had commissioned this apologia as inducement. If Duesberg would only sign the mea culpa, O’Brien implored, he could have everything back. He would be back at the top again, back in the safe bastion of Dr. Fauci’s medical and science establishment.
Duesberg refused the bribe.44
In a 2009 documentary, Duesberg is somewhat empathetic, if not sympathetic, toward his detractors: “They are prostitutes, most of them, my colleagues–and to some degree, myself. You have to be a prostitute to get money for your research. You’re trained a little bit to be a prostitute.” He smiles and adds, “But some go all the way.”45
Refusal to Debate
For several years, journalist John Lauritsen tried to get any scientist at NIH to answer the questions in Duesberg’s article. But the orders had come from NIAID that no government scientist should respond. NIH officials repeatedly told Lauritsen that “none of the scientists for Robert Gallo in government were interested in discussing the etiology of AIDS.” Lauritsen was therefore intrigued when the New York Times reported Tony Fauci’s laconic official response to Duesberg’s article: “The evidence that HIV causes AIDS is so overwhelming that it almost doesn’t deserve any discussion anymore.”46 Lauritsen complained to me, “As a member of the press, I thought I should have been allowed to speak to Dr. Fauci, and ask him to reveal just one or two pieces of ‘overwhelming evidence’ that HIV is the cause of AIDS. How did he get away with this? His only strategy was to act as if the evidence was so overwhelming that no one should be allowed to question the assertion. Fauci adopted the posture that neither he nor his colleagues had any obligation to reply to Duesberg, or any of his other critics. It was the secular version of the doctrine of Papal infallibility; everyone must just accept the ‘AIDS virus’ theory as a matter of fact because the public health pope declares it.”47
Harvey Bialy, founding scientific editor of Nature Biotechnology, said: “I am very tired of hearing AIDS establishment scientists tell me they are ‘too busy saving lives’ to sit down and refute Peter Duesberg’s arguments although each one assures me they could ‘do it in a minute if they had to.’”48
In 2006, Britain’s preeminent epidemiologist, Gordon Stewart, voiced a similar frustration: “I have asked the health authorities, editors-in-chief and other experts concerned with HIV/AIDS, repeatedly for proof of their theses—and I’ve been waiting for an answer since 1984.”49
Dr. Fauci’s own refusal to debate his theories is just the tip of the iceberg. Dr. Fauci’s control of his PI army gives him the ability to shut down all debate. When National Public Radio attempted to stage a conversation between Duesberg and a supporter of the HIV hypothesis, it could find no one willing to confront him. “Critiquing a dubious theory would take time away from more productive efforts,” Anthony Fauci, head of NIAID, told NPR producers.50
When Bialy challenged Dr. John Moore of Cornell University to a debate on AIDS, Moore wrote in reply: “Participating in any public forum with the likes of Bialy would give him a credibility that he does not merit. The science community does not ‘debate’ with the AIDS denialists, it treats them with the utter contempt that they deserve and exposes them for the charlatans that they are. Kindly do not send me any further communications on this or any related matter.”51