AIDS Heterodoxy in Harvard Magazine

The letter below was printed in the March-April 1991 issue of Harvard Magazine. However, the second paragraph and block indent were cut, thus diminishing the case against the HIV-AIDS hypothesis.

AIDS Heterodoxy
From two articles in the November/December issue (“A Hero in the War on AIDS” and “The Harvard AIDS Institute”) it is clear that Harvard follows the official AIDS paradigm: that the “Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome” is new; that “AIDS” represents a single disease entity with a single cause; and that the cause is a newly discovered retrovirus, tendentiously named the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). In fact, not one of the two dozen diseases in the syndrome is new, and immune deficiency can have many causes, from chemicals, to malnutrition, to extreme stress or depression, to bad genes, to radiation, to old age.
    Unknown to the general public, a growing number of important scientists are now convinced that HIV is not the cause of “AIDS”. The foremost skeptic is Peter Duesberg, professor of Molecular Biology at Berkeley. Duesberg's most comprehensive critique of the HIV-AIDS hypothesis, “Human Immunodeficiency Syndrome: Correlation But Not Causation” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 1989), should be read by everyone who presumes to be knowledgeable about “AIDS”. Though it cannot be summarized briefly, it includes the following points:

HIV has failed the standard tests for establishing a causal relationship between a microbe and a particular disease. HIV lacks the physical properties to cause lethal illness, being a “profoundly conventional” member of a benign category of viruses. The HIV-AIDS hypothesis is refuted by the epidemiology of the syndrome: unlike infectious diseases, which spread into the general population, “AIDS” in the U.S. and Europe has remained rigidly compartmentalized, confined almost entirely to intravenous drug users and homosexual men.

    The HIV-AIDS hypothesis forms the pernicious theoretical basis for AZT therapy, which is now being given to many tens of thousands of people, including those who are objectively healthy. In my recent book, Poison By Prescription: The AZT Story,* I come to three main conclusions: 1) AZT is a highly toxic drug, the long-term use of which is incompatible with life; 2) There is no scientifically credible evidence that AZT has benefits of any kind; and 3) AZT was approved for marketing on the basis of fraudulent research.
    Harvard should lead the way in fostering a free and open debate on the etiology of “AIDS”. If Harvard continues to profiteer on the basis of a false hypothesis, which prevails through the absence of free enquiry, then history will remember the Harvard AIDS Institute as Harvard's Infamy.

John Lauritsen ’61
New York City


*
Poison By Prescription: The AZT Story is now online. To read it click here.

Back to the “AIDS” page.

Home