Still Crazy After All These Years: The Challenge of AIDS Denialism for Science

In his new book, Denying AIDS, Seth Kalichman observes that people are surprised by the persistence of AIDS denialists: ‘‘Are they still around?’’[1, p. 1] he is often asked. And it is a good question. Given the large body of scientific and clinical evidence on HIV disease and treatment (expertly summarized by Chigwedere and Essex in this issue of AIDS and Behavior) it is indeed strange that Peter Duesberg and his followers still claim HIV is harmless and that antiretrovirals cause rather than treat AIDS. While such dissident views were intellectually respectable in the 1980s when HIV science was new, they make little sense today. Thus Joseph Sonnabend, a doctor who treated some of the earliest AIDS cases in New York and was well known for arguing that environmental factors may be more important than a virus in driving AIDS, was quick to change his mind once antiretroviral treatment was shown to act against HIV and transform the health of his patients [2, p. 25]. Peter Duesberg, by contrast, refused to accept the evidence, thereby earning the label ‘denialist’ rather than ‘dissident’