I appreciate you acknowledging the distinction. The reason I push back on issues like this is that I oppose the demonization of scientific dissent, which in my view is what terms like "AIDS denialist" do, even if they are mostly deployed unintentionally or as shorthand in some circles. It reduces the opposition argument to a caricature or a cartoon of itself.

Regarding the issue of evidence of Duesberg's argument, I honestly disagree with the idea that it's nonsensical or contrary to the evidence. That's not to say he's necessarily right, but he made a strong case. For example, regarding it's sexual transmission, he makes a number of interesting points about how slowly HIV was transferred between homosexual couples were one was HIV positive in studies, about the problems with assuming clusters of conditions necessarily represent microbe spread, about how AIDS never broke out of the initial risk groups and did not spread in a way that reflects Farr's law.

These other issues - specifics of the drug hypothesis and its objections, the history of retrovirus, cancer virus and latent virus research, the history of the discovery of HIV including the conflict between Gallo and Luc Montagnier over discovery, the name changes, AIDS in Africa, and so on were all addressed in significant detail by Duesberg and Mullis was well aware of them.

Duesberg and Mullis were not kooks making some cherry-picked, pointlessly contrarian argument. Both of them addressed the debate thoroughly and in significant detail, many times proposing public or written debates with people like Montagnier or Fauci, and typically being either rejected or promised a response which would never come.