Stephen Martin's Recollections of Peter Duesberg

by Stephen Martin, Ph.D. Immunology, University of California, Berkeley
June 30, 2007

Peter Duesberg was one of my professors at Berkeley. Peter is an organic chemist who made his name conducting research on retroviruses...but not the HIV virus. He is very intelligent and a good bench scientist. Peter can be very funny and engaging at times, but overall he is a second rate person. This comment has nothing to do with his denial of the HIV virus and AIDS. He seemed to delight in humiliating people, including visiting scientists who gave lectures at Berkeley. When the lights dimmed and the projector was turned on, Peter always moved close to the projector light beam so he
could make hand puppets that projected on the screen. The students laughed, but the lecturers and most faculty members hated him.

I don't know if Peter is a homophobe, but one of my friends, an openly gay man in Peter's lab, was treated like shit by him. When my friend finished his research, Peter refused to pay the "page charges" that scientists have to pay to get their studies published in scientific journals. This money would normally come out of Peter's research grant. My friend had to pay the $500 out of his own pocket. It was pure meaness on Peter's part.

Peter is a mean spirited person with tunnel vision, and nothing is going to change him.

Peter once said that science was not a popularity contest. He is absolutely right. And he has the right to disagree to accepted dogma. But after 20 years, and tens of thousands of research papers, you'd think he would get the message that the HIV virus does indeed cause AIDS.

Reprinted with permission from the author. See the source page on the author's blog [1].