Perplexity makes the case that the debate about HIV being the cause of AIDS would be more effective and get more attention if it simply focused on whether the foundational research of David Ho on HIV should be retracted.
The public debate over whether HIV causes AIDS has often failed to gain serious engagement from mainstream audiences due to its diffuse framing and association with broad “denialist” rhetoric. Focusing that debate narrowly on whether the foundational research of David Ho should be retracted would make it far more precise, empirically grounded, and consequential. Why Focus on David Ho David Ho’s research in the mid-1990s was central to the paradigm that HIV causes AIDS and replicates continuously, requiring lifelong antiretroviral therapy. His work on viral dynamics—especially showing that billions of viral particles are produced daily and that combination therapy could suppress viral load to undetectable levels—became the conceptual cornerstone of HIV treatment models and public health policy. Time magazine named him “Man of the Year” in 1996 for this very reason. Yet portions of Ho’s research record have been retracted. In 2004, Ho and colleagues formally withdrew a key interpretatio...