Scientific Response To The Duesberg Hypothesis
The consensus in the scientific community is that the Duesberg hypothesis has been refuted by a large and growing mass of evidence showing that HIV causes AIDS, that the amount of virus in the blood correlates with disease progression, that a plausible mechanism for HIV's action has been proposed, and that anti-HIV medication decreases mortality and opportunistic infection in people with AIDS.
In the 9 December 1994 issue of Science (Vol. 266, No. 5191), Duesberg's methods and claims were evaluated in a group of articles. The authors concluded that:
- it is abundantly evident that HIV causes disease and death in hemophiliacs, a group generally lacking Duesberg's proposed risk factors.
- HIV fulfills Koch's postulates, which are one set of criteria for demonstrating a causal relationship between a microbe and a disease. (Subsequently, additional data further demonstrated the fulfillment of Koch's postulates.)
- the AIDS epidemic in Thailand cited by Duesberg as confirmation of his hypothesis is in fact evidence of the role of HIV in AIDS.
- According to researchers who conducted large-scale studies of AZT, the drug does not cause AIDS. Furthermore, researchers acknowledged that recreational drugs do cause immune abnormalities, though not the type of immunodeficiency seen in AIDS.
Read more about this topic: Duesberg Hypothesis
Famous quotes containing the words scientific, response and/or hypothesis:
“The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Play for young children is not recreation activity,... It is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity.... Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“It is more than likely that the brain itself is, in origin and development, only a sort of great clot of genital fluid held in suspense or reserved.... This hypothesis ... would explain the enormous content of the brain as a maker or presenter of images.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)