David Pasquarelli is still valently holding on in his fight to remain
dead from AIDS.

US AIDS denialist dies at 36
Gus Cairns
Gay.com UK
25 March, 2004
more articles by Gus Cairns

David Pasquarelli, a US AIDS activist who fought long and hard to
convince others that Aids was not caused by HIV, and was jailed for
his pains, has died of the Aids-related illness CMV (cytomegalovirus).
He was 36.

Pasquarelli started as a conventional ACT-UP activist in his home
state of Florida, but soon became convinced by the arguments of
dissident scientists like Peter Duesberg that Aids was not a viral
illness but an immune suppression brought about by stress, drug use,
HIV medications or other factors.

In 1993 he moved to San Francisco where he and a group of denialists
effectively took over ACT-UP San Francisco. The dissident group was
notorious for its confrontational forms of protest which involved the
pillorying of public health officials and noisy and on occasion
violent disruptions of other organisations' meetings. Pasquarelli was
a talented satirist and graphic artist, producing at one point ACT-UP
SF's own cable TV programme.

Following what was said to be phoned death threats from Pasquarelli to
public health officials, he was jailed for 72 days in November 2001.
In good health till then, his immune system collapsed in jail and he
was increasingly unwell from them on.

Although many people in ‘conventional' HIV organisations detested
Pasquarelli for his frequently libellous attacks on their work and
motives, there was unease in some quarters that jailing an activist
like Pasquarelli for sincerely-held beliefs was using a sledgehammer
to crack a nut.

Opinion on David's death was predictably outraged in the tribute book
organised for his website. Some praised his work exposing the ‘AID$
Myth'. Others said that Pasquarelli had done valuable work exposing
self-serving exaggerations of the true epidemiology of Aids in San
Francisco and challenging the salaries given to some HIV workers.

And others said he was motivated as much by attempting to combat the
stigma attached to anal sex as he was to combating conventional
theories on Aids.

He is survived by his partner Steve Huggins, who is giving donations
in David's memory to the Aids Emergency Fund, San Francisco's HIV
hardship programme.