Duesberg hypothesis

The Duesberg hypothesis is the claim, associated with University of California, Berkeley professor Peter Duesberg, that various noninfectious factors such as but not limited to, recreational and pharmaceutical drug use are the cause of AIDS, and that HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is merely a harmless passenger virus. The most prominent supporters of this hypothesis are Duesberg himself, biochemist and vitamin proponent David Rasnick, and journalist Celia Farber. The scientific community contends that Duesberg's arguments are the result of cherry-picking predominantly outdated scientific data and selectively ignoring evidence in favor of HIV's role in AIDS. The scientific consensus is that the Duesberg hypothesis is incorrect and that HIV is the cause of AIDS.

Duesberg argues that there is a statistical correlation between trends in recreational drug use and trends in AIDS cases. He argues that the epidemic of AIDS cases in the 1980s corresponds to a supposed epidemic of recreational drug use in the United States and Europe during the same time frame.

These claims are not supported by epidemiologic data. The average yearly increase in opioid-related deaths from 1990 to 2002 was nearly three times the yearly increase from 1979–90, with the greatest increase in 2000–02, yet AIDS cases and deaths fell dramatically during the mid-to-late-1990s. Duesberg's claim that recreational drug use, rather than HIV, was the cause of AIDS has been specifically examined and found to be false. Cohort studies have found that only HIV-positive drug users develop opportunistic infections; HIV-negative drug users do not develop such infections, indicating that HIV rather than drug use is the cause of AIDS.

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