About the Book
Our understanding, prevention, and treatment of HIV have made remarkable strides in the past two decades, but the way has not been smooth or straight. Part history, part narrative, and mainly scientific autopsy, this book is an insider's account of the errors, controversies and corrections that have marked the first 25 years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States. The author discusses the sources of these errors and controversies and provides many examples. These range from the scientifically contentious and protracted-- such as laboratory contaminations that lead to identifying HTLV-III and HTLV-IV, or arguments that there were HIV patients who were silently infected, and not detectable by standard HIV tests--to controversies that the scientific community quickly evaluated and discarded--such as the belief that HIV is spread by mosquitoes, or that one AIDS-associated cancer is caused by poppers, nitrates inhaled for sexual stimulation. This book describes how these many scientific errors occurred, how they got propagated, how they distracted researchers and the public, and how they got corrected.
Holmberg, a longtime past Chief of Epidemiology in the CDC's Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, shows us how scientific errors and controversies inevitably occur in the absence, ignorance, or dismissal of good data, and the promotion of bad data or analyses. He suggests reforms of governmental processes, medical and scientific journal review, and in graduate education that may help scientists recognize and correct errors faster, and so deal with future epidemics more efficiently.
About the Author :
Scott D. Holmberg, M.D., joined the Centers for Disease Control in 1982. As a Peace Corps Volunteer working in smallpox eradication in Ethiopia, he had become dedicated to a professional life of investigating and controlling epidemics. He then returned to the United States, and, after premedical courses, medical school, and residency, joined the CDC. The history of scientific errors and controversies in this book is based on his experience as Chief of Epidemiology for the CDC's Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention from 1986 to 2005. Holmberg has authored or co-authored more than 150 scientific articles about HIV/AIDS, and has received many awards from the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Public Health Service, in which he served as a Commissioned Officer. He is a graduate of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and Emory University.
Review :
This book is an autopsy of errors. Drawing on his 20 years as chief of epidemiology in the division of the prevention of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Scott Holmberg dissects a litter of discarded theories and opinions about the epidemic to learn how they arose, were propagated, and were eventually corrected. The result is an instructive illustration of how errors afflict science at all levels, and it provides some thoughtful, if overly optimistic, observations on how to reduce their incidence. . . . offers a well-documented account that will be of interest not only to HIV and AIDS scholars but to anyone concerned with the role of error in modern medicine.
Part history, part narrative, and principally a scientific autopsy, this book is an insider's account of the errors, controversies, and corrections that have marked the first twenty-five years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States. It describes how these many scientific errors occurred, how they distracted researchers and the public, and how they were corrected. The author shows how scienfitic errors and controversies inevitably occur in the abscence, ignorance, or dismissal of good data, and the promotion of bad data or analyses. He suggests reforms of government processes, medical and scientific journal review, and graduate education that may help scientists recognize and correct error faster, enabling us to deal with future epidemics more efficiently.
…Hope for a cure sometimes creates a frenzy of expectation. In the chapter titled 'Early Drugs and Biomedical Interventions,' Holmberg expertly takes us through some of the thinking and activity surrounding ineffective HIV treatment compounds that were early research targets, such as peptide T, dextran sulfate, compound Q, interleukin 2, and in¬terferon alpha, and the hope and controversy that emerged during research phases….After reading this book, one wonders if there is some ingrained aspect of the public milieu, as well as perhaps permanent structural elements within the scientific community, that promote the kind of rollercoaster ride associated with the investigation of HIV/AIDS and the efforts of public programs to address the pandemic. In summary, the book presents the reader with an excellent view of scientific issues affected by errors and controversies in the US HIV/AIDS epidemic.'
