Ben Goldacre’s column over the weekend entitled
Medical Hypotheses fails the Aids test, which in turn led me to this detailed explanation on AIDSTruth.org entitled
Elsevier retracts Duesberg’s AIDS Denialist article. After that, it all became clear. Basically, the slapdown administered to Duesberg and other HIV/AIDS denialists had its genesis in a
study by Pride Chigwedere and coinvestigators at Harvard University, who estimated that delays in providing antiretroviral drugs in South Africa because of state-supported AIDS denialism (in which Duesberg played a prominent role in promoting) had caused over 300,000 deaths. In fact, the article mentioned Duesberg’s role in promoting HIV/AIDS denialism in South Africa.
This is what happened:
AIDS denialist Peter Duesberg, whose influence on the disastrous South African government policies was mentioned in Chigwedere’s article, submitted a response to JAIDS that was co-authored by four others including Rasnick (and Fiala). After this article was rejected because of its poor academic quality, Duesberg et al. submitted it to a different journal, Medical Hypotheses. Two days later, the editor accepted the paper. Medical Hypotheses does not practice peer review, a process in which several scientists check a submitted academic paper for quality and suggest needed improvements over a period of weeks or months. The Duesberg et al. paper was accepted without such a review process, after inspection only by the editor of Medical Hypotheses.
