Under a brilliant early-morning sky in Berkeley, California, Peter Duesberg pushes his bicycle along Oxford Street while animatedly explaining his new theory of cancer — oblivious to the fact that he is about to walk in front of a car. A professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California at Berkeley, the 71-year-old Duesberg could pass for a younger man. He is slender, with white hair and strong features, and today he is wearing a black leather jacket over a button-down shirt. Cancer is an old passion, a topic he has been researching for more than 40 years. Now his radical theory on the origins of the disease is finally winning serious attention.
He is so absorbed in conversation that only as disaster is about to strike does he look up to see the car bearing down on him. Duesberg giggles as if enjoying a private joke ...
