Whether that's true or not (and I still think that HIV and AIDS are related), it was the prevailing knowledge at the time, and was the best possible known path to effectuate treatment.
Medical science goes up a lot of blind alleys before finding the way out, and I don't blame anyone for trying something that didn't work. A bunch of shysters shouldn't make out like bandits just because someone might have cut a minor corner on trying to fix these kids' problems.
It was never "the prevailing knowledge" it was the prevailing political position.
HIV was never proven to be the cause of AIDS in any scientific paper, this was announced in a NIH press conference by Bob Gallo who had stolen the virus and had a history of falsely attritributing diseases to harmless retroviruses.
Politics not knowledge.