Peter Duesberg
| Peter H. Duesberg | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 2, 1936 Münster, Germany |
| Residence | Oakland, California |
| Fields | Cancer |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
| Alma mater | University of Frankfurt |
| Thesis | Fraktionierungen von Proteinen – besonders Enzymen – mit Ionenaustauschern und Molekularsieben <vom Typ Sephadex> (1963) |
| Known for |
Oncogene research AIDS denialism |
Peter H. Duesberg (born December 2, 1936) is a German American molecular biologist and a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his early research into genetic aspects of cancer, and more recently for his central role in the AIDS denialism movement as a proponent of the belief that HIV is harmless and does not cause AIDS. Duesberg received acclaim early in his career for research on oncogenes and cancer. With Peter K. Vogt, he reported in 1970 that a cancer-causing virus of birds had extra genetic material compared with non-cancer-causing viruses, hypothesizing that this material contributed to cancer. At the age of 36, Duesberg was awarded tenure at the University of California, Berkeley, and at 49 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He received an Outstanding Investigator Grant (OIG) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1986, and from 1986 to 1987 was a Fogarty Scholar-in-Residence at the NIH laboratories in Bethesda, Maryland.
Long considered a contrarian by his scientific colleagues, Duesberg began to gain public notoriety with a March 1987 article in Cancer Research entitled "Retroviruses as Carcinogens and Pathogens: Expectations and Reality". In this and subsequent writings, Duesberg proposed his hypothesis that AIDS is caused by long-term consumption of recreational drugs or antiretroviral drugs, and that HIV is a harmless passenger virus. In contrast, the scientific consensus is that HIV infection causes AIDS; Duesberg's HIV/AIDS claims have been addressed and rejected as erroneous by the scientific community. Reviews of his opinions in Nature and Science asserted that they were unpersuasive and based on selective reading of the literature, and that although Duesberg had a right to a dissenting opinion, his failure to fairly review evidence that HIV causes AIDS meant that his opinion lacked credibility.
...
Wikipedia