‘I don’t want to be a good German’ - German-born researcher turns down NIH ‘bribe’
Frontline News previously reported how the world-renowned scientist warning the world that HIV was NOT the cause of AIDS, Peter Duesberg, was taken to the opera by a senior NIH official and offered a resumption of his research funding if only he would sign a pre-prepared paper saying that HIV causes AIDS after all.
We now report the professor’s profound response.
How Duesberg sleeps at night
Duesberg was expected to bend. Many researchers caved under far less pressure.
Inventing the AIDS Virus recounts the scientist’s response. Duesberg refused to sign the paper at the opera café. Instead, Duesberg promised only to provide an answer before the NIH official’s scheduled meeting with the editor of Nature. The editor already knew about the ghost-written paper with Duesberg’s name on it and planned to publish it the second Duesberg acquiesced. To his chagrin, that acquiescence never came. Rather, Duesberg stuck to his guns and offered quite the opposite.
[Duesberg’s] decision was to [offer to] convert the paper in two: one essentially unchanged but without Duesberg's name; the other a rebuttal written by Duesberg.
This proposal would have put both sides of the debate on an equal footing - but it proved to be the end of this most unusual invitation to publish in Nature. [Emphasis added; p. 406].
Addressing Holocaust reference
As expected, Anthony Fauci and other public health officials at the NIH did not take Duesberg’s refusal well. The NIH went so far as to fund research papers entitled, “There is no Proof that HIV Causes AIDS”: AIDS Denialism Beliefs among People Living with HIV/AIDS.
Why did NIH officials choose denialism as the term to address Duesberg's views, a Berkeley professor? Even though Duesberg was a scholar-in-residence at the NIH laboratories in Bethesda and a close associate of top NIH officials, Fauci and his colleagues were aware neither of what Discover Magazine described as Duesberg’s sharp German accent nor of his background:
Duesberg’s parents, both intellectuals who held politics in contempt, were unable or unwilling to openly confront the Nazi threat.
In an attempt to evade pressure to join the Nazi Party, Duesberg’s father volunteered [as a doctor] for the army …
Duesberg is self-conscious about his heritage, and it is perhaps inescapable that the war and his father’s role in the German army would have fueled some of this.
In a pointed reference to those who say the Holocaust never occurred, he and others who challenge the prevailing understanding that HIV is the cause of AIDS have been labeled “denialists” … [Emphasis added].
Duesberg indeed took this Holocaust reference to his AIDS research to heart, but turned the tables on his accusers:
. . . for more than two decades Duesberg has surely paid a price for his beliefs. Even close friends have begged him to back off some of his statements, if only so he isn’t targeted and shunned.
Asked why he persists in raising questions about AIDS when it has resulted in financial losses, professional rejection, and social isolation for him and his family, Duesberg, pushing his bike along a walkway that winds its way through the lush grass and stately trees of the Berkeley campus, stops walking, thinks for a few moments, and says, “I don’t want to be a ‘good German.’” [Emphasis added].
No to groupthink
Duesberg elaborated on his German reference:
Sitting amid floor-to-ceiling shelves overflowing with papers, boxes of journals, and textbooks on oncology, AIDS, medical virology, biochemistry, and immunology, Duesberg responds to a question about one book, Thou Shalt Not Think: The Brutally Frank Guide to Life by David Jack.
“The author sent that to me,” he says of the book, which explains how orthodox thinking is enforced. “We’re supposed to be ‘good soldiers’ following orders from the higher-ups,” he adds disdainfully.
Fighting Fauci
The refusal to give in on the HIV debate went both ways. For those unfamiliar with “pre-COVID Fauci,” the Independent Institute tells us about Fauci’s previous niche. “Fauci was the government mouthpiece for “AIDS thought control.” Unable to refute Duesberg scientifically, Fauci did his best to ‘cancel’ the distinguished medical scientist.”
The silencing of HIV dissent actually began well before the opera offer. “In 1988, the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour sent camera crews to interview Duesberg, but the PBS show pulled the interview and replaced it with a short segment of Fauci attacking Duesberg.”
The next year “Fauci complained in an editorial that Duesberg’s ideas were getting too much publicity.”
Legacy media took the cue. “ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ flew Duesberg to New York for an in-studio interview. That same evening, the Berkeley professor got word that the interview had been cancelled. When viewers tuned in, they saw Fauci.”
Duesberg faced a similar fate with a scheduled appearance on ABC’s “Nightline,” which replaced Duesberg at the last second with, again, Fauci.
Benefits of being “cut loose”
There are also benefits to getting the “Fauci treatment”.
Sitting in the small, cramped laboratory to which he has been relocated in Berkeley’s Donner Hall, Duesberg surprises this writer when he observes, “Scientific isolation has its advantages.”
In the years since he took his stance on HIV, he has seen his resources dwindle, but he has also been cut loose from the strings that come with public funding. “I was free to pursue things the way I saw them,” Duesberg says.
Campus cold shoulder
Though not susceptible to termination being a tenured professor, NIH officials are able to extend a dissident scientist’s isolation to their university life.
. . . the University of California at Berkeley refused to endorse his appeal to the NIH, without which he could not legally proceed. As with most universities, virtually the largest source of income was from research grants, especially from the NIH, and the university must have feared retaliation …
Several fellow professors maneuver against Duesberg in various ways.
His promotions in pay are blocked and his teaching assignments are restricted to difficult undergraduate laboratory courses rather than the coveted graduate lecture courses.
While other faculty sit on committees governing teaching policies, courses and curricula, speaker invitations, and hiring of faculty, Duesberg is placed in charge of the annual picnic committee. More important, graduate students are discouraged from entering Duesberg's lab during their decision-making first year … [Emphases added; pp. 399-405].
Students disagree
Discover Magazine found one area, though, where he has not lost campus support. "Other teachers hide from their students, but not Dr. Duesberg … He’s the best teacher here.”
Check back
Starting to see a parallel between the 1980s hysteria about HIV and the reaction to the 2019 strain of the long-known coronaviruses? Please visit for the continuation of our AIDS series as we explore:
- What do coronavirus and HIV have in common?
- What do the COVID vaccines and the HIV treatment have in common?
- How many times have public health officials mistakenly blamed a virus or bacteria for a disease?
- Who’s censoring Kennedy’s expose The Real Anthony Fauci?
- Was AIDS a trial run for COVID?
Previous articles from our AIDS series:
Inventing the AIDS and COVID viruses?
The real cause of AIDS, known to health officials since day one
HIV 'discoverer' blamed AIDS on stolen virus without detecting in patient
Flashback: When doctor injected self with HIV to end 'greatest murderous fraud in medical history'
The Day the Science Died - Criteria to determine disease cause canceled
Destroying science by funding it
Isolation after defunding - government attacks on dissident scientists
Why thousands of top PhDs, MDs turned on Fauci
