Farewell to Peter Duesberg, a godfather of scientific disinformation

[Gary C]

You can draw a line from RFK Jr back to Peter Duesberg. With the advent of Web 2.0, medical disinformation is now a profitable business model.

"Duesberg was a pioneer of disinformation on infectious disease," says John P. Moore, professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College and the author of a devastating 1996 takedown in Nature of Duesberg's claims.

Duesberg's embrace of a dangerously wrong hypothesis to the point that it destroyed his career is almost a Shakespearean narrative.

The German native built a career in the U.S. as a brilliant virologist with significant discoveries to his credit and long had been revered among his colleagues. But that ended when he entered the HIV wars. By 1996, Richard Horton, then the editor of the Lancet, the British medical journal, could marvel: "He is now perhaps the most vilified scientist alive."

Full Article: https://www.latimes.com/business/st...esberg-godfather-of-scientific-disinformation
Alternate site: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/me...ther-of-scientific-disinformation/ar-AA1VePo7

 

[Ann K]

With the advent of Web 2.0, medical disinformation is now a profitable business model.

Here's another quack in the news today (yes, there always seems to be one more) who profits from misinformation, as well as from the sale of supplements that he praises:

Among the new hires at CBS announced by Bari Weiss is a doctor who has claimed that he has reduced his biological age by 20 years with therapies including cold plunges; cod liver oil can treat autism and that conditions like Alzheimer's and dementia can be reversed with the kind of nutritional supplements he also sells on his online store.

Dr Mark Hyman, who has been called a "germ theory denialist" by the medical author Harriet Hall, and has been brought on as a contributor in Weiss's revamping of CBS's news division. He is perhaps the most prominent exponent of so-called "functional medicine" (FM), an alternative medicine that the oncological surgeon David Gorski has described as "pure quackery".

Like some other moves at CBS, his hiring is likely to win favor with the Donald Trump administration.

Hyman is a longtime collaborator with health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, writing a preface for Kennedy's 2014 book that argued for the removal of the preservative thimerosal from vaccines, and appearing alongside Kennedy in an upcoming documentary, Maha Uncensored. Hyman also co-authored a diet book with the evangelical pastor Rick Warren.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/29/bari-weiss-cbs-mark-hyman

Much more in the article.
Edit to add:
I have no idea why my quote is truncated here, but it's all in the article. I can't seem to fix it.
Edit again: It seems to be OK now. I stripped out internal links and replaced them with plain text.

 

[John J.]

Duesberg claimed that there was no epidemic of AIDS, caused by HIV, in Africa. He claimed many African people diagnosed with AIDS, who had HIV infection, actually had other conditions which might often be cured/ alleviated with simple, cheap interventions but not antiretroviral drugs.
He was catastrophically wrong. Real world events have demonstrated, beyond any reasonable doubt, that he was catastrophically wrong.
Despite the overwhelming evidence, Duesberg never admitted that he might have been mistaken.

Some governments, notably in South Africa, chose to believed Duesberg's theories and chose not to treat people with HIV/AIDS with antiretrovirals, which would be expensive. Many of those infected/ most at risk were from very poor communities. Why spend all that money when simple dietary changes are all that is necessary? And when a reputable molecular biologist was saying HIV didn't cause AIDS?

Duesberg's views are cited as major influences on South African HIV/AIDS policy under the administration of Thabo Mbeki, which embraced AIDS denialism. Duesberg served on an advisory panel to Mbeki convened in 2000. The Mbeki administration's failure to provide antiretroviral drugs in a timely manner, due in part to the influence of AIDS denialism, is thought to be responsible for hundreds of thousands of preventable AIDS deaths and HIV infections in South Africa.

Wikipedia, Peter Duesberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg

South Africa's controversial former health minister between 1999 and 2008, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang... ...obstructed AIDS treatment that might have prevented at least 330 000 unnecessary deaths, according to researchers from Harvard School of Public Health... ...Her nickname, Dr Beetroot, arose from her suggestion that beetroot, garlic, olive oil and lemon, and African potato were more use than antiretroviral drugs.

Obituaries, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, Pat Sidley, 2010, BMJ 340 https://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c127.full

(Some common herbal remedies, including garlic, reduce the effectiveness of antiretroviral treatments;

Certain supplements are known to cause problems with the effectiveness of HIV treatment. Four of these are garlic, St. John's wort, echinacea, and ginseng.

"Alternative Treatments for HIV and AIDS" [which admits alternative treatments "...aren't proven to treat or cure HIV"], Healthline website, current version 21 July 2025, "Last medically reviewed on March 29, 2018" but no physician/ institution identified as the reviewer,
https://www.healthline.com/health/hiv-aids/alternative-treatments#takeaway).

Antiretroviral medications are the only effective treatments for AIDS (other drugs can be effective/ required in treating opportunistic infections and symptoms in AIDS sufferers). Antiretroviral drugs can be very effective in preventing asymptomatic HIV infection progressing to AIDS.
They are effective at preventing people infected with HIV passing on their infection to others.
People infected with HIV are now much less likely to develop AIDS, and die of AIDS, or infect others, because of antiretroviral drugs.
Duesberg claimed that HIV was not the cause of AIDS; it is. There is no reasonable doubt about it. There was very little doubt when Duesberg first raised his hypothesis.

As far as I know Duesberg never expressed remorse for the many tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of people who avoidably suffered and died as the result of policies which he helped influence. I guess if he didn't accept he was wrong, he didn't have to accept any responsibility.
Duesberg also opposed routine HPV vaccination (which might prevent 70% of cervical cancer and some other cancers, Wikipedia, HPV Vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPV_vaccine). As a grim corollary to Duesberg's influence (same article)

Cervical cancer represents the most common cause of cancer-related deaths—more than 3,000 deaths per year—among women in South Africa because of high HIV prevalence, making the introduction of the vaccine highly desirable.

Duesberg must rank alongside Thomas Midgely, inventor of leaded petrol and the widespread use of CFCs as refrigerants and aerosol propellants (Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.) amongst those who had influential, astonishingly harmful ideas but who probably didn't intend to hurt anyone. Unlike Midgley, Duesberg should have been aware of the overwhelming evidence for the harm that he caused in his lifetime.