It's true. Sometime around 1993 (I think?), when Phil Johnson was making
his first forays into newsgroups, he showed up on sci.med.aids. He used
a similar style to that employed in his anti-evolution tracts. Basically he
thought that the HIV-AIDS link was not terribly convincing and even
reproduced some of the stock Duesberg lines for why he thought this way
[ie. Why is HIV is difficult to detect in many patients? (Answer: It's not
if you use the right methods to detect it.) Why is AIDS spread differently
in Africa (Answer: Alternate transmission routes which are specific for
parts of Africa), Why aren't the infected Asians dropping like flies?
(Answer: They are.) & etc].
At one point there was a small conference held in the San Francisco
Bay Area (something like: "Scientists Reassessing AIDS"), for the
so-called "HIV-dissidents". Peter Duesberg, Kary Mullis and some others
I can't remember right now were featured speakers/participants, as was
Phil Johnson. Sometime during that conference, Phil took a few of the
"dissident" panel members & organizers out to a restaurant and treated
his guests to a very nice dinner. As I said, I don't know if Phil
remains active in this field -- Dissent seems to have died down lately.
His motivation for entering the debate? I have no idea.
His grasp of the important, fine details of medical science and
biochemistry (such as PCR and epidemiology)? Apparently weak.
I don't think he appreciated how fast the AIDS field was moving or
how unreliable a source Peter Duesberg can be.
Regards, Tim Ikeda (timi@mendel.berkeley.edu)