In the original post, your critique of the Altman article was so trenchant and incisive that the headlines exonerating him seemed rather baffling, at least to this reader. On reconsideration, however, it’s true that Altman did take pains to point out that the findings were not conclusive and that the French scientists had beaten Dr. Gallo to the punch by reporting a similar – and probably identical – virus a year earlier.

In the 1996 book Inventing the AIDS Virus, Dr. Peter Duesberg correctly wrote of the April 23, 1984 press conference that “Margaret Heckler, Secretary of Health and Human Services…officially declared this new virus was probably the cause of AIDS, a conclusion dutifully reported by the media.” Duesberg went on to say, however, that “By April 24, EIS member Lawrence Altman had dubbed it the ‘AIDS virus’ for the readers of the New York Times.”

This was mistaken: nowhere in that Times’ article did Altman use the term “AIDS virus.” The error is repeated in Duesberg’s June 2003 paper (p. 388). In both cases, the citation is: L. K. Altman, Researchers believe AIDS virus is found; New York Times, April 24, 1984, p. C1. The title of Altman’s article of that date was actually, “New U.S. report names virus that may cause AIDS.” It’s possible a reprint in another newspaper may have had the other title, but this would not be Altman’s fault.

A computer search of the NY Times database found that a similar title did appear for an article by another writer 18 months later (Philip Boffey, “Researchers report progress in fight against AIDS virus,” NY Times, 10/10/1985). It was also Boffey who first used the term “AIDS virus” in the NY Times — one week after the press conference (”A likely AIDS cause, but still no cure,” NYT 4/29/84). Dr. Altman first mentioned “AIDS virus” in an article three weeks after the news conference (”Red Cross evaluates test to detect AIDS in donated blood,” NY Times, 5/15/1984).

My investigation has found that the first to use the term “AIDS virus” was not Altman nor the NY Times, but the National Cancer Institute in it’s 4/23/84 press release entitled “NCI Isolates AIDS Virus” (click HERE to see it). The first major newspaper to use the term in a title was the Los Angeles Times (”Suspected AIDS virus identified by scientists,” Harry Nelson, 4/24/1984). Nelson, who was their longtime medical writer, said that it was announced as “the probable cause…of AIDS.” He also checked the Science papers and reported that it was isolated in “26 of 72 patients with…AIDS”. I conclude that he did a better reporting job on this issue than Dr. Altman.

But when you write

At the NIH press conference, the virus was announced as “the probable cause of AIDS”, whereas Altman in the Times dropped any such qualifier and called it “the virus that is the cause of AIDS.” Is Truthseeker suggesting that Duesberg misrepresented the press conference? If so, let me remind him that Peter Duesberg is an impeccable scientist who does not make careless mistakes.

raising the alarming possibility that we have made a careless mistake and the headlines and the whole post are ill founded, we can only refer you back to our post which as precisely as we could manage pointed out that Larry did not move in that way from “probable cause” to “the cause” until way into the article, and then only twice, and otherwise used many cautious qualifiers after that, as the headline writer correctly reflected by using the word “May” as in “May Be The Cause of AIDS”.

So he really cannot be counted as having being responsible in this, his first Times HIV?AIDS article, for converting the Gallo/NIH claim of “probable cause of” into “is the cause of” as Duesberg claims, and others have mistakenly repeated, without checking Duesberg, because he is usually so very reliable.

Thus the usually impeccable Duesberg is wrong in giving that impression, though he is right to say that Altman did move in that direction by saying “the cause of AIDS” without any qualification twice among these relevant phrases, which otherwise in seven more instances correctly leave the matter uncertain:

“THAT MAY CAUSE AIDS” (headline)

“If the suspect viruses become indisputably linked to AIDS”

The only other mention of the virus as unequivocally the cause of AIDS is not Altman’s but belongs to James Curran, head of the CDC team. He says “”then something is wrong because one virus causes AIDS.”” But this is a QUOTE from James Curran, who then is reported as saying that “there may be several other so-called co-factors”.

The evidence thus shows that, rather than Truthseeker’s slightly ironic headlines being misleading, Altman did a darn good job of including the possibility of the claim not proving out. They also show that Truthseeker (to his surprise) is the impeccable researcher, at least in this case, and not Duesberg and sorry to say, not even Houston, although the track records of both the latter sources are exceedingly fine according to our NARBS meter, which has not yet even trembled let alone moved above zero for either researcher.

The only new point we can recall in your lengthy post (we certainly hope that this bad habit of Truthseeker to be too discursive is not catching on among those to whom we normally look to set a good example that we try in vain to follow) is that HTLV-III as mentioned by Gallo was a bunch of related viruses and not just one. OK, but so what? He was clearly trying to fudge the issue of whether HTLV-III was really LAV. Who knows what he really had in hand? Presumably a single variant of LAV, judging from the subsequent investigation. The whole matter of what precisely is being discussed here remains obscure even today, as far as we are concerned, even though we put our money on Duesberg’s assurance that HIV is demonstrated as a specific retrovirus with repeatable evidence of fixed genetic mkeup.)

But you also emphasize that Altman downplayed the low proportion of samples that yielded evidence of virus, and surely you are right, and the claim, which many find hard to believe anyway given Gallo’s lab shenanigans exposed later, that he found it in the blood of 50 patients should have had the number of samples he didn’t detect it in, should have been fully described in a phrase like “50 out of X” patients.

But the bottom line is that your statement, on the “the probable/the cause of AIDS” issue, that

“These qualifications were ignored by Altman, who soon condensed the description into “the virus that causes AIDS.”

is inaccurate, you must agree. Twice in nine times is not an overall change. Houston, I am afraid you are caught short here, which is astonishing, given your record of precision. But just as surprising is that Duesberg was also caught in the web of this myth.

How was Duesberg caught short? We suspect that Duesberg was simply relying on the reporting of his original co-author, Bryan Ellison, when rewriting his book as sole author. He obviously didn’t check the article again himself.

You were caught short, I presume, by relying on Duesberg, which is normally a perfectly sensible position.

But perhaps there is another reason for this almost unique lapse in the widely renowned Houston performance. Perhaps you feel strongly that the respect afforded by Altman to Robert Gallo was shamefully exaggerated in the first place, as he abdicated the responsibility of a truly professional journalist independently to assess claims made by scientists and other experts, who may be taking advantage of the layman, rather than just transcribe them, and put them into context, however carefully.

Sure. Altman should have used his intelligence and his experience to formulate the obvious questions, as we like to think we did ourselves in our earlier post pointing out that Gallo deserves credit for being the first to demonstrate that HIV is clearly not the cause of AIDS. Otherwise, if their chief medical correspondent wishes to treat pronouncements from scientists as Biblical, why doesn’t the New York Times simply hire a graduate student to transcribe NIH press releases and scientists’ claims with no more critical assessment than a stenographer? Why pay Altman?

If that’s why you can’t bear to let Altman off the hook for his irresponsibility and lack of professionalsm, we wholeheartedly agree with you. But that was the intended point of the rather rambling post, in the end. His accurate reporting of the caveats on HIV as the cause of AIDS was admirable, contrary to the false accusation that he solidified the claim in that way. But it is not enough to excuse his willingness to go along with the claim without examining it critically, in what has become his standard spineless fashion, even if the little tiny wildhaired dissenter in him is very occasionally spotted peeking above the sandbags surrounding his Times desk.

For example, Truthseeker properly points out significant discrepancies between Dr. Altman’s wording that “they had found the virus that they believe is the cause of…AIDS” and the actual press release and scientific papers. The NIH press release used the term “primary cause” – thus allowing co-factors, and the scientific papers spoke of “evidence of a causative involvement of the virus in AIDS.” These qualifications were ignored by Altman, who soon condensed the description into “the virus that causes AIDS.”

In saying that Altman was unfairly criticised, Truthseeker is ignoring why he was criticised and implying that the basis was false. One of the main critics was Dr. Peter Duesberg, who in his 1996 book, Inventing the AIDS Virus, specified the crux of the problem. At the NIH press conference, the virus was announced as “the probable cause of AIDS”, whereas Altman in the Times dropped any such qualifier and called it “the virus that is the cause of AIDS.” Is Truthseeker suggesting that Duesberg misrepresented the press conference? If so, let me remind him that Peter Duesberg is an impeccable scientist who does not make careless mistakes. Furthermore, anyone who watched the TV special “The Age of AIDS” (PBS, May 30-31, 2006) would have seen HHS Secretary Margaret Heckler at the actual 4/23/84 press conference announce: “First, the probable cause of AIDS has been found, a variant of a known human cancer virus.”

Truthseeker himself points out another serious problem with Altman’s report: “A more alert correspondent might have asked himself, and perhaps Robert Gallo at the press conference,… why it was that HIV, which made a very poor showing, having been found in only a third of the cases Gallo had tested, was the culprit…” Instead, the medically trained Altman did not even go so far as to raise the obvious question of what proportion of patients had the virus. Instead he participated in the cultivated cover-up of this information by Gallo and the NIH, stating that Gallo “had isolated the virus from more than 50 patients.” The impression was left that the virus was found in all AIDS patients tested; the reader would not know that it was found in only a minority: 26 of the 72 AIDS patients (36%), as Truthseeker discussed so well in a prior post (”How Gallo proved that HIV was not the cause of AIDS”).

In his article, Dr. Altman also mentioned that antibody to the virus was found in about 85% of AIDS patients, without informing the readers that antibodies only indicate prior exposure, not current presence, and that higher antibody rates of other viruses are found in AIDS patients. Dr. Altman also misrepresented the facts, then and since, by constantly referring to HTLV-III as a single virus. In actuality, both the scientific papers and the NIH press release referred to a group of viruses that collectively were termed HTLV-III.

Truthseeker suggests that Altman should be excused since he mentioned the prior French discovery of LAV and because years later he reported on problems in HIV research. I submit that none of this excuses the distorted reporting in his 1984 HIV=AIDS article, which set in print a number of false assumptions from which the world has yet to recover.