Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

LEADING AIDS researchers reacted angrily to a TV documentary screened
in Britain this week which claimed that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. The
scientists criticised the programme for being selective with data and supporting
its case with irrelevant arguments. They were also concerned that its message
might confuse viewers. The Department of Health said this week that statements
in the programme ‘appear to be based on a misunderstanding about the nature
of AIDS’.

The Dispatches programme, called ‘The AIDS Catch’, was scheduled for
transmission in prime time on Channel 4 a week before the start of the Sixth
International Conference on AIDS in San Francisco. It was based largely
on the arguments of Peter Duesberg, a molecular biologist from the University
of California, Berkeley, who believes that HIV is a ‘harmless passenger’
and not the cause of AIDS. Duesberg believes other factors, such as repeated
use of intravenous drugs and malnutrition, cause the collection of symptoms
that comprise AIDS.

The documentary, produced by Meditel, an independent company whose previous
programme on Peter Duesberg’s views won an award two years ago, argued that
the profit motives of the ‘orthodox AIDS industry’ could be stifling debate
about the disease. The producers prefaced the programme with a brief warning:
‘Tonight’s programme does not argue that all thoughts of safe sex can be
discounted. Indeed, for high-risk groups, safe sex may well be the government’s
only accurate piece of advice.’

‘The AIDS Catch’ claimed that because most people with AIDS in the US
and Britain are men and most of these are gay or use intravenous drugs,
the cause of the disease cannot be an infectious agent. ‘No infectious agent
can be that selective,’ it said. The 45-minute programme devoted about one
minute to the issue of AIDS in Africa, where about 3 million people are
estimated to have been infected with HIV, 95 per cent of them heterosexuals.
Gordon Stewart, an epidemiologist who recently retired from the University
of Glasgow, was one of the scientists quoted in the programme. He said that
HIV had not spread into the heterosexual population on a large scale in
the US or Britain, dismissing Africa as ‘something else’. Roy Anderson,
an epidemiologist from Imperial College, London, told New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ that
Stewart ‘would benefit from becoming aware of the scientific literature’.

The programme’s only other reference to AIDS in Africa was that the
symptoms more commonly seen there, such as fever, diarrhoea and malaria,
could be blamed on malnutrition and disease alone. Karen Brown, from Channel
4, who was the programme’s deputy commissioning editor, said after a press
preview of the documentary that there had not been time for more discussion
of Africa in the programme.

New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ invited Robin Weiss, a leading HIV virologist from the
Chester Beatty Laboratories at the Institute of Cancer Research in London,
and his colleagues, to preview a tape of the programme.

John Moore, a member of Weiss’s team, said people could become confused
by the ‘highly selective’ picture presented by the programme. The researchers
argued that the more orthodox arguments should also have been given. ‘This
doesn’t look like good science journalism,’ said Moore.

Mark Boyd, another researcher, said: ‘It would be tragic if any viewer
were to become confused as a result of this programme to alter their behaviour
and increase their risk of infection.’

‘The fact is that AIDS is an epidemic, it has a start and unfortunately
it doesn’t have a finish,’ said Weiss. The disease was unlikely to be merely
the effects of malnutrition and persistent infections, he said, because
‘ordinary Africans recognised it as something new’ when it first spread,
for example, to Uganda. ‘What is happening in Africa, in South America and
Asia was almost completely dismissed,’ he said. ‘To us AIDS researchers,
that’s of immense importance.’

The programme repeated several arguments made by Duesberg two years
ago about the molecular biology of HIV. For example, Duesberg claims that
the virus cannot be the cause of AIDS because viruses and bacteria ‘work
fast or never’. Weiss and his colleagues said that the evidence from chronic
hepatitis, herpes, tuberculosis and other infectious agents – which can
lie dormant for years – refute Duesberg’s claim.

Walter Gilbert, a molecular biologist and Nobel prizewinner from Harvard
University who is quoted on the programme, says the virus has not been demonstrated
to cause AIDS in experimental animals. But research just published in the
journal Science (vol 248, p 1109) by leading researchers from New England
and California has shown that a purified clone of a simian immunodeficiency
virus causes symptoms of immune deficiency in common rhesus monkeys. This
finding strengthens evidence that the virus – and not contaminants or other
factors – is the causative agent, said Weiss.