Not everyone is convinced that HIV is the cause of AIDS. A minority of people have come to the conclusion that the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS is flawed, and have sought other explanations for the causes of the disease. This form of scientific dispute is by no means confined to the field of AIDS; there is vigorous scientific debate about the causes of many diseases.

What makes the debate over the causes of AIDS different is the extent to which the issue has become politicised by media coverage and allegations of a conspiracy between scientists and pharmaceutical companies. It's also notable that researchers who have been working in the field since the beginning of the epidemic are in virtually unanimous agreement that HIV is the cause of AIDS, and virtually no prominent scientists in the fields of virology and immunology have endorsed the criticisms of the HIV-AIDS link.

Despite this consensus, the link between HIV and AIDS continues to come under vigorous attack. Why do critics of the theory believe that the association between HIV and AIDS is false?