To the Editor:

There is a seriously misleading misprint in my letter in the October issue responding to Michael Fumento’s review of Robert S. Root-Bernstein’s book, Rethinking Aids [Books in Review, July]. The original letter said that 5 percent of the chickens infected with the leukosis virus developed the disease, but this was printed as 50 percent, which gives a totally false picture of the pathogenicity of the disease. The overwhelming majority of chickens, infected early in life with this virus of the same class as HIV, develop no symptoms of the disease. A similar situation might exist for normal heterosexuals infected with HIV.

A minor misprint occurs in the first paragraph: my letter stated the annual AIDS incidence as 2-3 percent among HIV-infected individuals, but it appeared as 2.3 percent. There is a more substantive problem here than a minor misprint. The government has been temporizing with the estimates of the size of the HIV-infected population, at least since 1987, with a tendency to decrease the numbers, presumably because the incidence of clinically recognizable AIDS cases did not agree with stated figures for the lag time to development of the disease. This lag-time estimate increased from five years in the early days to ten years more recently.

A trend in the opposite direction has set in for the reported number of clinical AIDS cases, increasing from 30,000 to 47,000 this year after they had been reported nearly constant. The reason for this sudden upturn is not hard to find since several new disease categories, such as tuberculosis and cervical cancer, have been added to the AIDS list. This occurred under pressure from AIDS activists and other groups, after that reclassification had twice been rejected by expert panels.

The questionable logic of this action reminds me of a conversation I had with the U.S. Army’s leading AIDS specialist in 1987. He told me he had seen eight cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma in Army recruits, two of whom were diagnosed as AIDS. When I asked if there was a difference in symptoms that called for the distinction in diagnosis among cases, he said no, just that those classified as AIDS had antibodies to HIV. This was followed by a lecture that AIDS was no longer a “syndrome,” which implies an unknown origin, but a “disease” which has a known cause, HIV in this case. With circular reasoning like that, is it any wonder that there is a strong association between AIDS and HIV?

An example of Mr. Fumento’s tendency to make wild charges: he credits me with disputing the findings of the Nature article which purported to rule out a role for drugs in AIDS. In fact, I have never met or spoken with Tom Bethell, whose letter criticizing the Nature study, among other things, also appeared in the October COMMENTARY, nor had I seen or commented on the Nature article at the time that its flaws were discovered by someone else.

Mr. Fumento falls back on his ad-hominem attacks in labeling as cultists all who doubt an exclusive role of HIV in AIDS. I tried to make clear that neither Root-Bernstein nor I rule out a role for HIV, but we believe there are many factors that are not just accessories. We do not agree with my colleague, Peter Duesberg, that some role for HIV can be categorically ruled out, any more than it can be categorically ruled in. However, Duesberg does deserve credit for keeping the issue of causality alive for scientific discussion. Root-Bernstein’s book deserves serious consideration for its exhaustive presentation of evidence, for keeping an open mind on the question of causality, and for emphasizing the multifactorial view. Mr. Fumento does a serious disservice to present and potential victims of the disease in labeling as cultists anyone who calls for a more objective consideration of the evidence.

Harry Rubin
Professsor of Cell and Developmental Biology
Virologist to the Virus Laboratory
University of California
Berkeley, California

_____________

 

Michael Fumento writes:

The first edition of my book, The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS, published in 1989, cites studies showing median infection-to-AIDS times of eight to eleven years. Thus, the lag-time estimate has held steady now for four years.

The new case definition of AIDS is certainly a political concoction, as Harry Rubin suggests, but it did not go into effect until 1993, and so cannot explain the figure of 47,000 AIDS cases which he cites and which, contrary to his impression, applies not to this year but to 1992. This year there will be around 100,000 cases of AIDS because of the new definition. It is rather alarming that Mr. Rubin does not know this, just as it is alarming that he thinks “the annual rate of clinical AIDS has been only about 30,000,” as he said in his original letter.

This demonstrates the perils of a virologist venturing forth into epidemiological territory without the proper equipment. This is exactly the problem of Peter Duesberg and of Robert S. Root-Bernstein as well. They, too, have assumed the mantle of a scientific discipline in which they have no expertise and, indeed, of which Duesberg is contemptuous. In this respect, they can be compared to other scientists like Carl Sagan and Paul Ehrlich who may be experts in their own fields but pretend to be experts in other fields—with the result that they are consistently and often spectacularly wrong.

I stated in my earlier reply: “[Tom] Bethell does not tell us the names of the Berkeley researchers who disputed the findings of the Nature article, but Harry Rubin comes to mind.” That was an assumption that, in light of Mr. Rubin’s now referring to the study’s “flaws,” could hardly have been unwarranted. But, yes, Mr. Bethell should have named the researchers.

In my review I made clear why Root-Bernstein’s thesis is essentially the same as Duesberg’s. I also made clear why he and his cult followers are the ones doing a “serious disservice” by downplaying the importance of avoiding HIV infection.

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