BOOK REVIEW (THE DAILY TELEGRAPH):
Neville Hodgkinson is infamous for having championed, while science
correspondent for The Sunday Times, the dissident views of the American
biologist Peter Duesberg, that AIDS is not caused by the HIV virus. Indeed,
Duesberg argues, AIDS is not an infectious disease at all, but the result
of a combination of factors - including promiscuous anal sex and recreational
drug abuse - that suppress the immune system. The mainstay of medical treatment,
the drug AZT, he calls "poison by prescription": not only is
it useless, but it also has side effects detrimental to the health of those
who take it.
The medical and scientific establishment thought it seriously unfunny
that The Sunday Times should propagate such views. From the Chief Medical
Officer downwards they queued up to denounce Hodgkinson for being ignorant,
irresponsible and cruel. Bruised but undaunted, Hodgkinson, with the imprimatur
of his editor, Andrew Neil, returned to the subject week after week. Everywhere
he looked he found what he interpreted as further evidence for Duesberg's
arguments, even travelling to Africa, from where he filed a report saying
that the catastrophic AIDS epidemic there was a myth. This bizarre folie
a deux continued until Andrew Neil left the paper, and Hodgkinson - much
to the relief of his embarrassed colleagues - resigned. It has been clear
from the very earliest days that AIDS is caused by an infectious agent
almost identical in its mode of transmission and pattern of spread to the
hepatitis B virus.
It is therefore not easy to imagine in advance what interest there could
be in Hodgkinson's apologia, AIDS: the Failure of Contemporary Science,
other than a chance to marvel at its author's powers of self-deception.
But this is a fascinating book, for, despite Hodgkinson's wrong-headedness,
the story he tells is essential to understanding the science and politics
of AIDS over the last decade. The dissident AIDS movement arose in reaction
to the fatalism inherent in the medical model of the disease, which held
that infection by the HIV virus would eventually culminate in AIDS, and
there was not much that could be done other than to prescribe AZT. Duesberg
was the only scientist to point out the small amount of the HIV virus present
in the body which, he wrongly infers, meant it could not cause such a devastating
illness as AIDS. None the less, this observation had two crucial corollaries:
perhaps other factors such as promiscuous sex or drug abuse might also
be necessary for the disease to progress, and there was something people
could do about this; secondly, AZT was unlikely to be a very effective
treatment. For over a decade the medical establishment sought by every
means to belittle or suppress the dissidents' arguments; and yet, on both
these counts, particularly following the disappointing results of the later
AZT trials, they have been vindicated. Here lies the drama of Hodgkinson's
tale, in which a small but passionate group of individuals fought an unequal
struggle against the certainties of orthodoxy. Paradoxically, it was precisely
because Hodgkinson was so wrong about HIV not being the cause of AIDS that
he generated the controversy that would ensure the dissidents' views would
reach the widest possible audience. *