==(Duesberg is) fixated on homosexuals using amyl nitrate "poppers." Other than being a mind altering substance and less inhibited about being promiscuous, I don't see an explanation from Duesberg for why homosexuals get AIDS.
Perhaps this will help you understand (note the other drugs listed):
Evidence continued to mount strongly supporting a connection between nitrite use, other recreational drugs, and AIDS. This included articles by James Goedert and William Blattner from the NIH, the CDC's sister institution (Goedert et al., 1982), by Harry Haverkos with the CDC's Kaposi's Sarcoma Opportunistic Infection (KSOI) task force, and an abundance of other studies on the immunotoxic and carcinogenic effects of nitrite inhalants (Newell et al., 1984; Haverkos & Dougherty, 1988a; Haverkos & Dougherty, 1988b). An English team reported in 1984 that 86% of male homosexual AIDS patients from St Mary's Hospital in London had inhaled nitrites compared to 86.4% from clinics in New York, San Francisco, and Atlanta (McManus et al., 1982). In 1983, two dozen of America's leading AIDS investigators including Friedman-Kien, Curran, and CDC worker Harold Jaffe, later director of the CDC's HIV/AIDS Division, had conducted extensive epidemiological studies which revealed overwhelming drug use, including nitrite inhalants, cocaine, and amphetamines by all homosexual AIDS patients studied (Table 2) (Jaffe et al., 1983).
Drugs seemed to be the most plausible explanation for the restriction of AIDS to risk groups, because drug consumption was the only health risk male homosexuals and intravenous drug users had in common (Krieger & Caceres, 1985). This original drug-AIDS hypothesis was euphemistically called the 'lifestyle hypothesis' (Oppenheimer, 1992). Indeed, massive supplies of illicit recreational drugs such as nitrite (poppers) and ethylchloride inhalants, cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, phenylcyclidine, and LSD had reached America and Europe since the Vietnam War and were the only statistically significant new health risks that had affected these countries since World War II (see page 103).
Suddenly, after the announcement of the discovery of the 'AIDS virus' by Gallo at the international press conference in Washington on April 23, 1984 (see above), the lifestyle hypothesis was dropped without notice - as if it never existed - in favor of the virus-AIDS hypothesis. Since then, any revisionism was immediately regarded as obsolete, or in the words of David Baltimore even as a 'pernicious and irresponsible' obstacle (Booth, 1988) in the war against the AIDS virus (Weiss & Jaffe, 1990; Cohen, 1994a; Duesberg, 1996d; O'Brien & Goedert, 1996; O'Brien, 1997). Henceforth, recreational drugs were only studied, if at all, as risk factors of HIV infection or as obstacles in anti-HIV medications.
http://www.duesberg.com/papers/chemical-bases.html
Indeed, massive supplies of illicit recreational drugs such as nitrite (poppers) and ethylchloride inhalants, cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, phenylcyclidine, and LSD had reached America and Europe since the Vietnam War and were the only statistically significant new health risks that had affected these countries since World War II (see page 103).The only drugs positively associated with becoming HIV positive and then acquiring an AIDS defining illness are the ones used intravenously, i.e. cocaine, heroin and amphetamines. Heroin is just diacetylmorphine. Morphine, cocaine and members of the amphetamine class are all used as legitimate medicines. When abused as recreational drugs they don't have to be injected. They can be smoked, snorted or swallowed. They do nothing to the immune system regardless of the method of administration or abuse. Give me something better than Duesberg's accusations and correlations that are refuted by too many other studies.
Regarding nitrites:
Part IV - Sociology and Behavioral Effects
Guthrie in 1859 first described the flushing of the skin of the neck and face that is observed in man following inhalation of amyl nitrite. Therapeutic inhalation of amyl nitrite has been utilized in medicine for the relief of angina pectoris since 1867. Ethyl nitrite was also used in 19th century medicine in the form of "sweet spirits of nitre" (a mixture of 25J% ethyl nitrite with 75% ethanol). This mixture was taken orally in a dosage equal to 1.90 - 3.75 cc mixed with water every three hours as a diaphoretic, diuretic or antispasmodic. Its effects, when inhaled, are described as qualitatively similar to the effects of amyl nitrite, although less intense due to the lower volatility of the mixture (U.S. Dispensatory, 18th Ed., 1899). The therapeutic use of "sweet spirits of nitre" ceased early in the 20th century when it was supplanted by more effective therapeutic agents. Amyl nitrite continues to be used on a therapeutic and diagnostic basis, although it has been largely supplanted by nitroglycerin tablets.
Misuse and Abuse (of nitrites)
Amyl nitrite and other volatile nitrites (“poppers”) have been used illicitly to enhance sexual pleasure. Some initial studies suggested that use of volatile nitrites, including amyl nitrite, may be one of numerous risk factors associated with the development of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and Kaposi’s sarcoma in male homosexuals;100 101 however, more recent epidemiologic studies, while confirming the frequent use of volatile nitrites by homosexual men, have not found nitrite use to be a significant risk factor,102 103 104 and some data suggest that the initial attribution of risk may have been related to an association between nitrite use and certain behaviors and practices associated with enhanced transmission of the human innumodeficiency virus (HIV).104 Misuse and abuse of amyl nitrite and other inhaled volatile nitrites may be associated with potentially life-threatening hypotension and/or hemodynamic compromise when combined with selective phosphodiesterase (PDE) inhibitors, which are used to increase the duration and intensity of erection. (See Drug Interactions: Selective Phosphodiesterase Inhibitors, in the Nitrates and Nitrites General Statement 24:12.08.)
The last quote and link comes from my favorite drug reference book, AHFS/DI - American Hospital Formulary Service - Drug Information. Later for the PDR.