Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 15:28:10 -0600 From: Brian Foley PhD To: Randall J. Scalise , peter duesberg Cc: John Cotton , Fred Olness , James The Amazing Randi , Stephen Barrett M.D. , Anthony Fauci , Robert Park Subject: Re: AIDS Dissent... Dear people interested in AIDS denial: http://www.gnclive.com/pubpod/crash/pcast.php or http://67.212.67.19/PubPodcast//crash/052208.mp3 Is a "conspiracy theory" or "alternative reality" type of radio show, I guess. At any rate, Peter Duesberg and Leonard Horowitz speak on it, both telling their usual stories. I am writing to you now, because I was sure I had sent Peter Duesberg a few of the better documents pertaining to exactly how we know for sure that HIV-1 came to humans from Chimpanzees, and HIV-2 came to humans from Sootey mangabeys. It turns out I did send those documents, along with my interpretations of them and some more information to help him understand them, and to do his own research if he had any questions about them. I still have the sent emails in my "sent mail" folder. And in searching for those sent mails, I also saw the one below, where Peter Duesberg is asking Randall Scalise to be tolerant of his "minority view". I had few doubts before, but now I am fully convinced that Peter Duesberg is not just ignorant of the facts but willfully lying about what he knows about HIV, if not AIDS. He states in the interview linked above that his professional opinion is that HIV is probably an endogenous virus, millions of years old. He says it has the same structure as endogenous viruses, etc. He knows very well that there are no endogenous lentiviruses with regulatory genes such as Vpr and Vpu and Vif. The RELIK endogenous retorvirus recently discovered in rabbits seems to be an ancient ancestor of the lentiviruses but it lacks the regulatory genes and has just the Gag-pol-env typcial of other endogenous retroviruses. RELIK shows a hint of tat and rev beginning to form, and it has a similar A-rich and C-poor nucleotide bias, which are the factors which contribute to it looking like an ancestor of lentiviruses. I explained all this and more to Peter, and was willing to answer any other questions he might have about the origins of HIV-1 and HIV-2. The only question he ever had for me was "exactly what is the percentage identity between HIV-1 and the nearest human endogenous retrovirus?", which turns out to be HERV-K. So, although years ago I may have been willing to excuse some of Peter Duesberg's misconceptions about HIV and AIDS as simple ignorance, I now am very convinced that he is willing to deliberately tell lies. I am very sad, but not entirely surprised, to have learned this. Please let me know if you have any questions. Sincerely, Brian Foley, PhD HIV Databases http://www.hiv.lanl.gov The papers I have sent to Peter Duesberg include the following: Van Heuverswyn F, Li Y, Bailes E, Neel C, Lafay B, Keele BF, Shaw KS, Takehisa J, Kraus MH, Loul S, Butel C, Liegeois F, Yangda B, Sharp PM, Mpoudi-Ngole E, Delaporte E, Hahn BH, Peeters M. Abstract Genetic diversity and phylogeographic clustering of SIVcpzPtt in wild chimpanzees in Cameroon. Virology. 2007 Nov 10;368(1):155-71. Epub 2007 Jul 24. PMID: 17651775 Van Heuverswyn F, Li Y, Neel C, Bailes E, Keele BF, Liu W, Loul S, Butel C, Liegeois F, Bienvenue Y, Ngolle EM, Sharp PM, Shaw GM, Delaporte E, Hahn BH, Peeters M. Abstract Human immunodeficiency viruses: SIV infection in wild gorillas. Nature. 2006 Nov 9;444(7116):164. PMID: 17093443 Korber B, Muldoon M, Theiler J, Gao F, Gupta R, Lapedes A, Hahn BH, Wolinsky S, Bhattacharya T. Free Full Text Timing the ancestor of the HIV-1 pandemic strains. Science. 2000 Jun 9;288(5472):1789-96. PMID: 10846155 Katzourakis A, Tristem M, Pybus OG, Gifford RJ. Free in PMC Discovery and analysis of the first endogenous lentivirus. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007 Apr 10;104(15):6261-5. Epub 2007 Mar 23. PMID: 17384150 ======================= ------ Forwarded Message From: "Randall J. Scalise" Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2006 19:15:38 -0600 (CST) To: peter duesberg Cc: David Crowe , "Randall J. Scalise" , John Cotton , Fred Olness , James The Amazing Randi , "Stephen Barrett M.D." , "Anthony S. Fauci M.D." , Robert Park , "Brian T. Foley" Subject: Re: AIDS Dissent... Dear Professor Duesberg, On Mon, 18 Dec 2006, peter duesberg wrote: > After all, all scientific innovation came from minorities, eg. > Galileo, Planck, Einstein,... Galileo's nemesis was the Roman Catholic Church, not other scientists. Galileo, Planck, and Einstein are famous and respected because they published and in this way convinced their peers that they were correct. Pons and Fleischmann are infamous because they announced their Cold Fusion claim in the press, bypassing the peer-review process. You are the one making the extraordinary claim, "that HIV is very unlikely to be the cause of AIDS," in the words of David Crowe. You have the burden of proof. Please publish your evidence and logical argument in a tier-1 peer-reviewed medical journal such as JAMA, NEJM, or the Lancet. Mr. Crowe also says, "...agreement between peer reviewers in clinical neuroscience journals was little greater than that predicted by chance." If you think you have a 50% chance of being published, simply submit your work to ten peer-reviewed journals. Then the chances that you will not be published by any of them is only 1 out of 1024. My expertise is particle physics, not virology. I rely on the editors and referees and the peer-review process to separate valid work from nonsense. Let me illustrate the problem with a hypothetical exercise. Suppose that you had no background whatsoever in particle physics and I sent you an email touting my great discovery that there are 4 colors of quark instead of the 3 that appear in physics literature. I then sent you hundreds of pages of quantum chromodynamics equations, experimental data from accelerators at national laboratories, and an argument justifying my conclusion that there are 4 colors. Should you believe me? You would want to know my credentials. You do a little research and find that I have a PhD in particle physics, have tenure at a prestigious university, and have a record of scholarly publications. Wouldn't it bother you just a bit that I was announcing this discovery, surely worth a Nobel Prize, by email or in a book written for the non-physicist or on the internet? Wouldn't you wonder why it didn't appear in a tier-1 peer-reviewed physics journal? Without going back to school and earning a PhD in particle physics, you must rely on the physics journal editors and referees. Now suppose that when you ask other expert particle physicists, 5000 of them tell you that there are definitely only 3 colors of quark, not 4. But you receive a steady stream of emails from acolytes who defend me and tell you that I'm right. Whom do you believe? I seem like a reasonable fellow and I did great work in the past. Still... where are those peer-reviewed journal articles? --Randall J. Scalise ,____________________________________________________________________. | Office: +1(214)768-2504 | Department of Physics | | Dept: +1(214)768-2495 | 102 Fondren Science Building | | FAX: +1(214)768-4095 | 3215 Daniel Avenue | | Email: scalise@smu.edu | Southern Methodist University | | http://www.phys.psu.edu/~scalise | Dallas, TX 75275-0175 | `--------------------------------------------------------------------' On Mon, 18 Dec 2006, peter duesberg wrote: > Dear colleague Randall Scalise, > > You may be surprised to hear from me that we have one thing in common: We > both defend classical scientific standards against pseudo-scientists. > > In view of this may I make a suggestion to you? I would recommend to be a > little more tolerant and forgiving or even courteous to current scientific > minorities. After all, all scientific innovation came from minorities, eg. > Galileo, Planck, Einstein, who used to say 'The important thing is not to > stop questioning'. > > So as a professor myself, I encourage my students to "dissent", but ask them > to be prepared for "questions". > > A penny for your thoughts or questions, > > Peter Duesberg ------ End of Forwarded Message