Writing on the web, Bruce Mirken has thanked the anti-poppers zealots: "I'd like to thank Lauritsen for laying out in explicit, if unintentional, detail the true nature of the AIDS denialist arguments (and yes, the comparison to Holocaust deniers is indeed apt): A collection of unsupported speculation propped up by carefully selected snippets of data that simply omit anything the "dissidents" find inconvenient."
Lauritsen's claim that the media have censored the views of the denialists is laughable. Nightline did a whole show on the subject a few years ago. They've also gotten extensive coverage in, among other outlets, the London Sunday Times, Spin, numerous gay and lesbian publications and--strikingly--key organs of the right-wing, antigay movement in the U.S., including The American Spectator and the Heritage Foundation's Policy Review.
After all of this attention it's hard to see how the fact that few take their views seriously can be blamed on censorship. Maybe--just maybe--it's because, after carefully looking at all of the data, intelligent observers have concluded that mainstream science, whatever its flaws, pretty much got it right this time.
But the best advice I can give readers is: Don't take my word for it. Look up the references. Read the data--all of it, not just the narrow interpretations of those with an axe to grind--and judge for yourself." (The information is available at the links on this website, both the pros and cons, the anti-popper view, and the opposite view.)
Randy Wicker (short bio) writes of one anti-popper zealot, "However, he totally loses “credibility” when he drags out his old/ancient/never-documented assertion that “poppers=death”. I read his book on that subject and the research simply showed that “if someone was HIV positive, the use of poppers did seem to increase the possibility of their contracting Karposi Sarcoma.” (*This assertion has now been dismissed as never having been valid. KS is not caused by poppers.)
If “poppers really did equal death” I'd be long dead by now. Once, after having a pleasant dinner with John Lauritsen, I actually indulged myself by “toasting him” with a hit of Rush as he looked on in wide-eyed wonder and/or horror."
Writing in NEWSLINE, Volume 3, Issue 1 • February 1997, Stephen J. O'Brien, Ph.D. Director, Laboratory of Genomic Diversity National Cancer Institute National Institutes of Health emphasized: "If AIDS was caused by recreational drugs like nitrate inhalants, also known as "poppers," and prescription drugs like zidovudine, also known as AZT, then how could one account for the millions of cases of AIDS that had occurred in Third World countries?"
Dr. O'Brien went on to say: "With each passing year the evidence that HIV causes AIDS grew more persuasive and less refutable, even at the purely rhetorical level. But even as this evidence mounted, Duesberg and his minions grew increasingly shrill and hectoring. Their unsupported but high-decibel jeremiads garnered some media attention-in 1993, for instance, the London Times labeled the epidemic "a tragic myth"-and even respectable scientific journals felt obliged to address the issue again and again, simply because Duesberg and his outspoken supporters raised the issue again and again."
As Bruce Mirken advises those reviewing the data on poppers: "Don't take my word for it. Look up the references. Read the data--all of it, not just the narrow interpretations of those with an axe to grind--and judge for yourself."
