Duesberg Claims That Retroviruses Like HIV Must Be Harmless To Survive
Peter Duesberg argues that retroviruses like HIV must be harmless to survive: they do not kill cells and they do not cause cancer, he maintains. Duesberg writes, "retroviruses do not kill cells because they depend on viable cells for the replication of their RNA from viral DNA integrated into cellular DNA." Duesberg elsewhere states that "the typical virus reproduces by entering a living cell and commandeering the cell's resources in order to make new virus particles, a process that ends with the disintegration of the dead cell".
Duesberg also rejects the involvement of retroviruses and other viruses in cancer. To him, virus-associated cancers are "freak accidents of nature" that do not warrant research programs such as the War on Cancer. Duesberg rejects a role in cancer for numerous viruses, including leukemia viruses, Epstein-Barr Virus, Human Papilloma Virus, Hepatitis B, Feline Leukemia Virus, and Human T-lymphotropic virus.
Duesberg claims that the supposedly innocuous nature of all retroviruses is supported by what he considers to be their normal mode of proliferation: infection from mother to child in utero. Duesberg does not suggest that HIV is an endogenous retrovirus, a virus integrated into the germ line and genetically heritable:
... provides her child with a nine-month continuous exposure to her blood and therefore has at least a 50 percent chance of passing HIV to the baby.
Read more about this topic: Duesberg Hypothesis
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