Nuclear weapons have not proven to be ``the last epidemic'' after all. In today's threatening climate, anything less than an epidemic─of cancer, violence, illiteracy, pollution, or disease-is hardly newsworthy.

According to Webster, ``epidemic'' means ``prevalent and spreading rapidly among many people in a community at the same time; widespread; said especially of contagious diseases''-and also of fads and fashions.

Epidemics are caused by ``germs.'' These might be microorganisms, ideas or ``chemicals.'' While the old comic-strip character Spotless McPartland may have gone out of fashion, his germ-stomping crusade is definitely in.

Besides vaccination, the weapons include research, regulation, ``education,'' and heroic therapy (but no quarantine). If the epidemic doesn't stop, the war is escalated: more billions of dollars and more saturation bombing with education, therapy, or enforcement. Of course, saturation bombing doesn't work if the target turns out to be a cabbage patch or a flock of wild geese. And education misfires if the curriculum is based on falsehood.

If the germs aren't stomped out, today's answer is to stomp harder─as was done in Japan, circa 1955 to 1973.

In 1955, a few isolated cases of a polio-like syndrome were reported in Japan. The victims had abdominal pain and diarrhea followed by nerve degeneration, leading to paralysis or blindness. This appeared to be a new disease and was named SMON (Subacute Myelo-Optic Neuropathy). Over the next five years, there were seven regional epidemics, with cases mounting steadily, reaching 161 by 1964, and nearly 2000 by 1966. In one region, nearly 3% of the population was afflicted by 1971. The disease seemed to occur in clusters. The virus hunters marched into battle.

A few scientists noted that most victims had been taking a drug called clioquinol or iodochlorhydroxyquin (marketed as Enterovioform or Emaform) to treat gastrointestinal symptoms. Their observation was dismissed. This drug was widely used and considered to be safe. According to the 1970 edition of Goodman and Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, the drug had ``a low order of toxicity, probably because little is absorbed.'' It was even used for preventing traveler's diarrhea. As late as 1979, Current Therapy recommended it for the treatment of asymptomatic amebiasis. And physicians don't like to believe that their prescription is actually causing the symptoms it is supposed to treat.

The virus hunters isolated ECHO viruses, Coxsackie viruses, slow viruses, and herpes viruses, while the epidemic continued to rage. Frightened family members avoided victims, and many committed suicide.

Although the preponderance of research funding went to virologists, a few scientists held out against prevailing opinion and insisted on studying noninfectious etiologies. Experiments proved them right. In 1970, the Japanese government banned sales of clioquinol, and the epidemic ceased. By then, the viral hypothesis had a life of its own. Research continued; results were published in the Lancet and in the 1976 edition of the American textbook Review of Medical Microbiology.

The outbreak of SMON was not confined to Japan, but was much worse there, probably because of the heavier consumption of clioquinol. (A possible contributing factor is that Japanese government policy encourages overprescription by paying physicians for each prescription that is written. The portion of the health insurance budget spent on drugs increased from 26% in 1961 to 40% in 1971.)

Despite a lawsuit and television documentaries in England and Germany, few scientists are aware of this story, which is detailed in the book Why We Will Never Win the War on AIDS by Bryan J. Ellison and Peter H. Duesberg (Inside Story Communications, 190 El Cerrito Plaza, Suite 201, El Cerrito, CA 94350, 1994). The authors conclude that ``this fifteen-year rampage that ignored evidence of a toxic cause and sacrificed thousands of human casualties to obsessive microbe chasing is simply too embarrassing to the virus-hunting establishment.''

Peter Duesberg is one of a small number of scientists who believes that the SMON story is being replayed in the AIDS epidemic. Except for one thing: Japanese skeptics had a place on the official SMON commission. After Gallo's press conference in 1984, announcing that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was the cause of AIDS, dissenters were thrust from the inner circle into outer darkness. Their grants were cut off, and their scientific papers were rejected by the major journals.

Duesberg refused to recant. The ranks of the skeptics grew. Kary Mullis, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for inventing the polymerase chain reaction, said: ``I can't find a single virologist who will give me references which show that HIV is the probable cause of AIDS....If you ask for that information, you don't get an answer, you get fury.'' He notes that there are now 10,000 people in the world specializing in HIV, whose expertise would be worthless if HIV doesn't cause AIDS.

``The Duesberg Phenomenon'' finally received coverage in a special news report in Science 266:1642-1649, 12/9/94: the maverick and the popular press on one side, the bastions of science and academia on the other.

Is Duesberg dangerous? Does his advice imperil lives? He contends that drugs, including AZT (which is frequently given to HIV-infected but asymptomatic patients), are a cause of AIDS. AZT is definitely toxic and expensive; its benefits are at best limited and transient. As to illicit drugs, he warns against taking them─with or without a clean needle. As to illicit sex, he doesn't recommend it, with or without a condom. As to standard, proven public health measures (contact tracing, widespread testing, closing down enterprises associated with the spread of disease, quarantine when necessary), they are seldom used anyway, thanks to the public health establishment and AIDS activists, not to Duesberg.

Is Duesberg right? The answer will be found by experiment, not by weighing credentials or scientific publications. More than $6 billion have been spent and 77,000 papers published without finding a cure. Why not fund a few studies based on new hypotheses? Why not actually test the HIV hypothesis? The key population is HIV-positive persons who do not use drugs (including AZT) and have no other immunosuppressive risk factors (such as multiple blood transfusions).

Such studies are dangerous. They could imperil the whole scientific establishment, even if Duesberg is wrong. Simply proposing them is to acknowledge that the monolithic, government-controlled, dissent-suppressing, imperial funding source is capable of monumental error.

The epidemic of scientific illiteracy or eunuchism, combined with a new McCarthyism, may be the last epidemic that we will have the ability to control.

The 13th annual meeting of DDP is tentatively scheduled for the weekend of July 15-16, the 50th anniversary of the Trinity Test, in Medford, OR. A visit to the home of Fighting Chance and Access to Energy will be offered. The meeting will memorialize Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner, longstanding civil defense advocate, and scientist William Hazeltine. Dr. Hazeltine, who has spoken at two DDP meetings, died Nov. 5, while seeking (and finding) allegedly endangered scarab beetles.