Inventing the AIDS Virus, Peter H. Duesberg
Regnery USA 1996, 720 pages, ISBN 0-89526-470-6.

Book Review- Publishers Preface:

As one reviewer said, "At last! This is the book every AIDS-watcher has been awaiting, in which the most prominent and persistent critic of HIV as the cause of AIDS presents his case most exhaustively and popularly."

The book you are about to read has been a long time in coming. Why? It is at once enormously controversial and impeccably documented. It comes from a scientist and writer of great ability and courage. It will cause, we believe, a firestorm of yet undetermined proportions in both the scientific and lay communities. And it is, I think I am safe in saying, about the most difficult book that the Regnery Company has published in nearly 50 years in the business.

If Duesberg is right in what he says about AIDS, and we think he is, he documents one of the great science scandals of the century. AIDS is the first political disease, the disease that consumes more government research money, more press time, and indeed probably more heartache-much of it unnecessary-than any other. Duesberg tells us why.

Regnery is the third publisher to have contracted to publish Inventing the AIDS Virus. Addison Wesley initially announced the book in 1993. St. Martin's signed it in January 1994 and subsequently assigned its contract to us in January 1995. We announced it, initially, in the fall of 1995 and finally published it in February 1996.

Bryan Ellison, Duesberg's former research assistant and original co-author, became disenchanted with Duesberg's and his publisher's insistence on careful documentation and self-published his own version under the title Why We Will Never Win the War on AIDS in 1994. We sued Ellison for breach of contract and copyright violation and, after a two-week federal court jury trial, were awarded a six-figure verdict and an injunction against Ellison's edition.

Inventing the AIDS Virus has been edited by at least five editors, has been agonized over by the publishers of three major publishing firms, and concurrently praised and damned by countless critics.

We anticipate that the prepublication controversy may be just a precursor of what is to follow. In our tradition of presenting the public provocative books, we are proud to be Peter Duesberg's publisher.*