VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE

AIDS ACTIVISM DOESN'T NEED DISSIDENTS LIKE THIS
Nobel winner has surprisingly shaky grasp of AIDS science

By Colman Jones

Now 22-28 Oct. 1998

Local AIDS rebels are positively rejoicing following last Sunday's appearance by Nobel laureate Kary Mullis, whose animated lecture critiquing the HIV theory of AIDS drew coverage in all three newspapers.

Indeed, I was enjoying the spectacle of headlines like Danger in HIV theory, myself, given that I've authored articles bearing similar banners for nearly a decade.

Alas, HEAL (an international coalition of AIDS dissidents), the group that invited Mullis, while obviously banking on the glitz of his Nobel, got the wrong man for the job.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and this admittedly fascinating biochemist with a nose for the unorthodox is a mere lightweight in the world of AIDS research.

There's no denying, however, that Mullis puts on quite a show for the couple of hundred people in the OISE auditorium.

Baggy jeans

In baggy jeans and rolled up sweater sleeves, the South Carolina-born 50-something delivers a rambling, Letterman-style diatribe against the AIDS establishment.

He's a crowd pleaser primarily, wandering the stage without notes, eager for questions and taking delight in puncturing AIDS truisms. AZT? "Poison." The honchos of AIDS research, Bob Gallo and David Ho? "Idiots''.

In the late 1980s, he says, he asked colleagues for a specific reference to the proposition that HIV is the probable cause of AIDS. None existed, he discovered - a revelation that gave him grave doubts about the direction of AIDS research.

He's also skeptical about "drug resistance" as an explanation for the increasing incidence of treatment failure. In his view, the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS is the problem, not the drugs or the virus. "The whole premise is wrong", he insists.

In a telephone interview prior to his visit here, Mullis insists we are really no closer to finding a cure for AIDS than we were 10 years ago, since we still have no idea how -or even if - HIV causes AIDS.

But critics of the dominant HIV paradigm face an uphill battle, Mullis points out. "There's very few of us, and we're not being paid, against a bunch of people that are, so the information you may hear can be twisted in all kinds of ways."

It would all be music to my ears, but instead I'm annoyed by his simplistic approach to a complex question. Sure, Mullis has solid scientific credentials, based primarily on his invention of the polymerase chain reaction, better known as the PCR, a revolutionary method of multiplying specific DNA segments in just hours that's often used to measure the amount of HIV in a person's body.

But he's got no particular training in the AIDS field and no standing as a virologist. And it just seems he spreads his scientfic scepticisms too thin for comfort.

Leafing through his new book, Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, it's clear the AIDS debate is only one of a whole series of challenges he makes to conventional scientific wisdom. It may be that chlorofluorocarbons don't deplete the ozone layer and industrial waste gases don't cause global warming, as he ventures, but with so many speculations on the go, it's easy to see why his AIDS pronouncements might be viewed with suspicion.

What the book also tells us is that he's a happening kind of guy, passionate about surfing, womanizing, hallucinogens, and UFOs. But the Nobel laureate brings a decidely unsophisticated critique to bear on AIDS science.

"It's all a bunch of crap,'' he tells the assembled audience in what appears to be more an attempt at folksiness.

To Mullis, money, not science, is driving the direction of AIDS research. He maintains virologists at the U.S. National Cancer Institute, such as HIV co-discoverer Gallo, who sought unsuccessfully to find a link between retroviruses and cancer in the 70's, saw in HIV a new opportunity to justify their research budgets.

In his talk, Mullis offers cartoon-like descriptions of imaginary meetings between Gallo and U.S. government officials leading up to the announcement that the cause of AIDS had been found.

To some observers, this increasingly conspiratorial tone, one that sees doctors and drug companies as inherently evil, represents an unfortunate trend.

Factual errors

The debate isn't helped by misleading arguments and factual errors. In his talk, Mullis at one point refers to HIV and SIV (a retrovirus found in monkeys) as being 30 per cent similar (they share 60 per cent similarity, it turns out), and claims that no anti-HIV treatment has ever been tested in animals (also wrong)

He regurgitates an old argument that AIDS is simply a collection of 29 separate diseases that mainstream scientists have lumped together merely because HIV antibodies are also present.

In other words, TB plus HIV equals AIDS, whereas TB minus HIV just equals TB, a model Mullis calls "one tight closed circle of stupidity'' that has more to do with financial interests than scientific rationale.

He and other dissidents who argue this way are making a gross oversimplification, of course, ignoring the fact that these normally harmless infections occur in the context of profound immune suppression, which Mullis appears to have little interest in unravelling.

Asked by an audience member why he hasn't taken some of his Nobel winings and used them to fund research into alternative theories, Mullis replies that he's already blown all his money, and that it's up to others to confirm or refute alternative hypotheses.

"I'm losing interest in this thing", Mullis confides to me on the phone. Asked why he's spending so much time speaking in public about it, he answers that it's only a way to promote his new book.

VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE