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In 1992, Duesberg shifted focus from HIV to argue that "AIDS [is] acquired by drug consumption and other noncontagious risk factors".(5) Apart from illicit and recreational drugs, Duesberg’s list included the first "anti-retroviral" compound zidovudine (AZT). In other words, a specific treatment for HIV infection was a cause of AIDS. Duesberg continued to regard HIV bona fide but an inert, harmless "passenger" virus linked to AIDS only through the kinds of activity associated with drug taking (including prescribed drugs). Duesberg, like others before him, pointed to the epidemiological data revealing a 50 fold difference in the AIDS "attack rate" between various groups of HIV positive individuals, as well as the proclivity of certain AIDS diseases for particular risk groups. Thus 50% of HIV positive blood transfusion recipients develop AIDS within one year (but so do 50% of HIV negatives) compared to 1% of haemophiliacs. Kaposis’ sarcoma was to all intents and purposes, confined to gay men.(5,13,74)). Thus, even if HIV were necessary to cause AIDS, it could not be the only factor. However, accretion of "co-factors" to the HIV theory rendered the significance of any particular factor problematic. It was possible to argue that HIV may be only a minor factor or, at least in Eleopulos' and Duesberg's minds, not a factor. Apparently the role of HIV was also a problem for Montagnier. Although he wrote in Nature in December 1984, "all available data are consistent with the virus being the causative agent of AIDS",(75) in 1985 he expressed an opinion impossible to reconcile with the HIV theory. "This syndrome occurs in a minority of infected persons, who generally have in common a past of antigenic stimulation and of immune depression before LAV [HIV] infection",(76) that is, cause after effect (italics ours). One must surmise that within a year, the discoverer of HIV was already hedging his bets. His recent interview with the investigative journalist Djamel Tahi (61) (see below), fuels such speculation.
Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos and the Perth group
Eleopulos’ AIDS research began in 1981. In May 1986 she submitted for publication a paper which refuted every step in the HIV theory, including HIV itself. She also proposed an alternative, non-viral theory (of which "Duesberg’s" "Drugs/AIDS hypothesis" is a subset), and predicated non-toxic and relatively inexpensive treatments.
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