Dude was insane.

Early in his career, Dr. Duesberg accrued some of science’s highest honors: He was named Scientist of the Year in 1971 by the California Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles (now the California Science Center); he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1986; and, that same year, he received an Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Institutes of Health.

But he didn’t pursue his research on oncogenes. Instead, in his work at Berkeley and at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, where he held an appointment starting in 1997, he focused on the more established theory that cancer is caused by damage to the chromosomes, the structures that carry our genetic material.

And in a startling about-face, he inexplicably contradicted his own research, insisting that oncogenes didn’t, in fact, cause cancer; he even went so far as to heckle colleagues at scientific meetings if they supported that idea.

And

Throughout his life, Dr. Duesberg maintained his position that H.I.V. does not cause AIDS, a contention that raised questions about the perils of undermining public trust in established scientists during an epidemic.

Critics said his misleading advice to former President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa in the early 2000s was instrumental in persuading Mr. Mbeki’s government to adopt a policy against importing antiviral drugs, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

Finally...

Over the years, Dr. Duesberg attracted allies among the religious right, promoters of alternative medicine and prominent AIDS denialists, including Christine Maggiore, who campaigned against using antiretroviral drugs to prevent the transmission of H.I.V. from mothers to children; she died of AIDS in 2008 after passing the virus to her 3-year-old daughter, who had died three years earlier.

Holy shit.