==His problem was that he couldn’t show why keeping the AIDS virus out of the blood supply prevented any new AIDS clinical diagnoses. This is still true 20 years later. No virus, no disease.
Not true at all. In this one study alone Duesberg found 4521 HIV-free AIDS cases:
http://www.duesberg.com/about/pdbiotech93.html
The problems with Duesberg and his methods were well documented.
If you have access, you can check out volume 266, No. 5191, of Science which is the 12/9/1994 issue, where several of his claims are addressed.
If Duesberg’s claims were true, HIV screening of the blood supply wouldn’t have reduced the rate that recipients of blood, and blood products, get AIDS.
The CDC has plenty of data to show the dramatic decline in AIDS cases in the US since HIV screening was implemented.
Research on AIDS has become sufficiently politicized that it is difficult to properly evaluate certain hypotheses. For example, if AIDS is defined as the occurrence of certain symptoms in a person who is HIV-positive, then by definition HIV will be a necessary causal factor for AIDS, but that won't imply that the HIV-AIDS link is meaningful (nor that it isn't).
The association between HIV and AIDS (the combination of symptoms associated with AIDS is much more common in people who are HIV-positive than in those who aren't) is sufficiently strong as to clearly merit study. Even if HIV is in fact harmless, its association with AIDS would, at minimum, suggest that tracking HIV may be useful as a proxy for tracking AIDS. That having been said, I would think it very important to be mindful of various ways that AIDS might be caused by a contagious agent other than HIV; if it is caused by some other agent, and an HIV-negative person infected with that agent infects other people, the HIV-antibody test might become ineffective at screening for AIDS.