4 ms·

>> one of the world's most famous virologists, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg actively denied that HI

>> one of the world's most famous virologists, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg actively denied that HIV caused AIDS and instead thought it was transmitted by drug use. I'm curious about his claim that retroviruses (retrovirii?) must be harmless to survive and multiply. What is the mainstream consensus on this? To be clear: I know next to nothing about viruses (virii? I mean I don't even know how to call them) and I have no idea whether it really supports Peter Duesberg's claims about AIDS in general. I'm just wondering whether he's pointed out an interesting peculiarity of HIV that is not further investigated by others for fear of being accused of denialism. Scientists can get very like that. >> (...) the current arguments about what scientists can say regarding the origins of COVID. It reminded me most about John Ioannidi's polemic against the way COVID was dealt with, rather than its origin. Ioannidis is a leading epidemiologist so he had to be taken seriously, although of course his opinion was rejected by most everyone else.

rcxdude 2y ago
I don't see any particular reason why retroviruses would be different in that regard: they need the cell they infect to live long enough to produce enough viruses, and it is advantageous to them that some cells they infect lay dormant and reactivate later (a trick not limited to retroviruses), but there's not particular reason why they should not overall act much like any other virus: keeping their host cell alive only long enough to produce enough new viruses to continue to propagate. It's an argument which you could extent to any pathogen: why would any disease kill its host?
- outworlder 2y ago
  > It's an argument which you could extent to any pathogen: why would any disease kill its host? Moreover, why would a disease even 'care' about the host? As long as it can jump hosts quickly, it can afford to kill many of them. If achieving fast transmission is tough on the host, so be it. Other diseases may select for the opposite approach, of course.
dekhn 2y ago
Speculating about the shape of the potential energy surface of viral evolution is non-trivial. I don't know enough (my retrovirus knowledge is out of date), but if you look at authoritative knowledge (IE, textbooks), you will see many non-harmless retroviruses: - oncoretroviruses: as a side effect of how they integrate, they often cause cancer in patients. There is lots of time between infection and death for the virus to be transmitted. - lentiviruses (this is also known as a "slow virus"). There is often lots of time between infection and death for the virus to be transmitted. It's possible that scientists are avoiding directly attempting to argue with Deusberg's observations, but in general, the consensus seems to be that he brought nothing useful to the debate except irrational claims that were inconsistent with the evidence. We don't live in an ultrarational world where every fringe theory can be investigated. As for Ioannidis... not sure what to say. I think his big mistake was going to the white house and trying to make Trump an ally and not shut down everything because he predicted the virus wouldn't spread and wouldn't be fatal at the rates that were later observed. Diseases like COVID are multidimensional problems with partial information and a high level of politics, corp, and media involvement. I think fauci and others have finally admitted that they may have made some mistakes in the specific details of the shutdowns, in particular, it took people a while to realize that the impact on children (who by and large are not at risk from COVID) was enormous. If your goal is to affect public health policy, you have to be a truly 4D thinker, and even that's not enough dimensions.
- YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
  Thanks. You reminded me hat Ioannidis made very specific predictions that turned out to be false (about the number of deaths we could expect). And that, while measures were adopted that he claimed were useless. I agree Fauci saved lives - and last time I saw him in the news he was being attacked by Republican trolls, I don't have any other word for those people.
opprobium 2y ago
You can read a lot about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duesberg_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duesberg_hypothesis The mainstream consensus is the he was wildly wrong about HIV specifically, that HIV causes AIDS, and that his influence in South Africa to not deploy anti-viral medications killed hundreds of thousands of people before the policy was reversed. Part of his hypothesis was that viruses in general, not just retroviruses, were not connected to cancers, the consensus view is that this is completely wrong. We have a very large body of evidence on many virus caused cancers now. Even at the time he was arguing this, it was clear that the retrovirus HTLV was disease causing in humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_T-lymphotropic_virus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_T-lymphotropic_virus So, the two known human retroviruses both cause disease and retroviruses cause diseases in animals. Duesberg held on to and promoted this concept long after it should have been clear to him that there was zero empirical support for his idea.
- dekhn 2y ago
  To me the most convincing bit that weakens his "hypothesis" is that people who received blood transfusions from HIV-contaminated blood. Many of those people showed none of the risk factors. See https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/20/world/europe/britain-contaminated-blood-scandal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/20/world/europe/britain-cont... for some recent discussion of the scope and scale of HIV contamination.
- WhitneyLand 2y ago
  Influenced the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people? Yet apparently to this day he draws over 200k/yr in salary from Berkeley. I believe they are not entirely funded by tuition/endowments which means California tax payers support him at least in part.
  - dekhn 2y ago
    He has tenure and hasn't done anything that would force the dean to fire him. He hasn't published in ~7 years. IIUC he's been isolated- doesn't get any real funding from NIH, or from the university (beyond the standard salary), and doesn't have an active lab. It would likely cost the university more in legal fees to get rid of him than keep him until he goes away.
IlliOnato 2y ago
In reality HIV does have to deal with pressures described by Duesberg, but the virus found a workaround: extremely long "incubation period". As you probably know, it can stay dormant for 10 years or more, but then gets into active stage, causes AIDS, and relatively quickly kills the host.

rcxdude 2y ago

I don't see any particular reason why retroviruses would be different in that regard: they need the cell they infect to live long enough to produce enough viruses, and it is advantageous to them that some cells they infect lay dormant and reactivate later (a trick not limited to retroviruses), but there's not particular reason why they should not overall act much like any other virus: keeping their host cell alive only long enough to produce enough new viruses to continue to propagate. It's an argument which you could extent to any pathogen: why would any disease kill its host?

outworlder 2y ago
> It's an argument which you could extent to any pathogen: why would any disease kill its host? Moreover, why would a disease even 'care' about the host? As long as it can jump hosts quickly, it can afford to kill many of them. If achieving fast transmission is tough on the host, so be it. Other diseases may select for the opposite approach, of course.

dekhn 2y ago

Speculating about the shape of the potential energy surface of viral evolution is non-trivial. I don't know enough (my retrovirus knowledge is out of date), but if you look at authoritative knowledge (IE, textbooks), you will see many non-harmless retroviruses: - oncoretroviruses: as a side effect of how they integrate, they often cause cancer in patients. There is lots of time between infection and death for the virus to be transmitted. - lentiviruses (this is also known as a "slow virus"). There is often lots of time between infection and death for the virus to be transmitted. It's possible that scientists are avoiding directly attempting to argue with Deusberg's observations, but in general, the consensus seems to be that he brought nothing useful to the debate except irrational claims that were inconsistent with the evidence. We don't live in an ultrarational world where every fringe theory can be investigated. As for Ioannidis... not sure what to say. I think his big mistake was going to the white house and trying to make Trump an ally and not shut down everything because he predicted the virus wouldn't spread and wouldn't be fatal at the rates that were later observed. Diseases like COVID are multidimensional problems with partial information and a high level of politics, corp, and media involvement. I think fauci and others have finally admitted that they may have made some mistakes in the specific details of the shutdowns, in particular, it took people a while to realize that the impact on children (who by and large are not at risk from COVID) was enormous. If your goal is to affect public health policy, you have to be a truly 4D thinker, and even that's not enough dimensions.

YeGoblynQueenne 2y ago
Thanks. You reminded me hat Ioannidis made very specific predictions that turned out to be false (about the number of deaths we could expect). And that, while measures were adopted that he claimed were useless. I agree Fauci saved lives - and last time I saw him in the news he was being attacked by Republican trolls, I don't have any other word for those people.

opprobium 2y ago

You can read a lot about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duesberg_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duesberg_hypothesis The mainstream consensus is the he was wildly wrong about HIV specifically, that HIV causes AIDS, and that his influence in South Africa to not deploy anti-viral medications killed hundreds of thousands of people before the policy was reversed. Part of his hypothesis was that viruses in general, not just retroviruses, were not connected to cancers, the consensus view is that this is completely wrong. We have a very large body of evidence on many virus caused cancers now. Even at the time he was arguing this, it was clear that the retrovirus HTLV was disease causing in humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_T-lymphotropic_virus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primate_T-lymphotropic_virus So, the two known human retroviruses both cause disease and retroviruses cause diseases in animals. Duesberg held on to and promoted this concept long after it should have been clear to him that there was zero empirical support for his idea.

dekhn 2y ago
To me the most convincing bit that weakens his "hypothesis" is that people who received blood transfusions from HIV-contaminated blood. Many of those people showed none of the risk factors. See https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/20/world/europe/britain-contaminated-blood-scandal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/20/world/europe/britain-cont... for some recent discussion of the scope and scale of HIV contamination.
WhitneyLand 2y ago
Influenced the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people? Yet apparently to this day he draws over 200k/yr in salary from Berkeley. I believe they are not entirely funded by tuition/endowments which means California tax payers support him at least in part.
- dekhn 2y ago
  He has tenure and hasn't done anything that would force the dean to fire him. He hasn't published in ~7 years. IIUC he's been isolated- doesn't get any real funding from NIH, or from the university (beyond the standard salary), and doesn't have an active lab. It would likely cost the university more in legal fees to get rid of him than keep him until he goes away.

IlliOnato 2y ago

In reality HIV does have to deal with pressures described by Duesberg, but the virus found a workaround: extremely long "incubation period". As you probably know, it can stay dormant for 10 years or more, but then gets into active stage, causes AIDS, and relatively quickly kills the host.