Project Inform cited in the press

 

AIDS Denialism in South Africa and the USA:
A Dangerous Two-Way Street

The New York Times, Sunday, June 4, 2006

Nicoli Nattrass, D.Phil.
Professor of Economics and Director of the AIDS and Society Research Unit,
University of Cape Town, South Africa

John Moore, PhD
Professor of Microbiology and Immunology,
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York

HIV causes AIDS. This established fact is based on over twenty years of solid science—as certain as the descent of humans from apes and the falling of dropped objects to the ground. So why are we reiterating what is already known? It is because ‘AIDS denialism’, that bizarre theory that HIV is harmless and that antiretrovirals cause rather than treat AIDS, remains a menace to public health – both in South Africa and the USA.

In South Africa, the legacy of President Mbeki’s AIDS denialism is evident in his administration’s reluctance to expand access to antiretroviral drugs. Despite generous allocations from the Treasury, and substantial assistance from foreign donors, only a quarter of those needing antiretrovirals actually receive them. This response, poor by the standards of middle-income countries, is especially tragic because more HIV-positive people live in South Africa than anywhere else on earth. American AIDS denialists share the blame.

In 2000, President Mbeki invited several USA-based denialists to serve on his ‘AIDS Advisory Panel’, and his administration still maintains connections with them. The Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who has described antiretrovirals as ‘poison’, employs a New York-based research technician, Roberto Giraldo, to promote nutritional alternatives such as lemons, garlic and olive oil as the answer to the AIDS problem. Several prominent South Africans have now died of AIDS after opting to change their diets instead of taking antiretrovirals. Another AIDS denialist, David Rasnick, misrepresents his academic credentials at the University of California, Berkeley to add apparent weight to letters to South African newspapers that question the science of AIDS. He even claims, absurdly, that HIV cannot be transmitted between heterosexuals. Rasnick now works for a multinational vitamin company, the Rath Foundation, conducting ‘clinical trials’ in which AIDS patients are encouraged to take multivitamins instead of antiretrovirals. In the past, the Medicines Control Council acted swiftly to curb such abuses, and the Medical Research Council was quick to condemn AIDS denialism. Recent high-level political appointments to both bodies have, however, neutered their influence. In South Africa, AIDS denialism now underpins a lucrative industry based on quackery that has the tacit, and sometimes active, support of the Mbeki administration.

AIDS denialism is a two-way street between South Africa and the USA: The courting of the denialists by the Mbeki administration gave them a lifeline in America. For example, President Mbeki was photographed meeting Christine Maggiore, a Californian who campaigns against using antiretrovirals to prevent transmission of HIV from mothers to children. (If a nation’s President meets you, you must be credible, right?). Mother to child HIV transmission is now very rare in the USA, thanks to the widespread use of preventative therapy and the activities of organizations like the National Institutes of Health and the Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Sadly, this is not so in South Africa where many children are born with HIV infection and then face short, painful lives. Ironically, Ms Maggiore herself gave birth to an HIV-positive daughter, Eliza Jane. When Eliza Jane became sick with an AIDS-related infection last year, her mother withheld information about the child’s possible HIV status, effectively denying her access to life-saving drugs. Like the many South Africans who have died because of President Mbeki’s AIDS policies, Eliza Jane was a victim of denialism—in this case her own mother’s. Other American infants have been placed in the same tragic situation over the years. In New York City, AIDS denialists have even interfered with the provision of antiretrovirals to HIV-infected children within the foster home system. Compromising child health in such ways cannot continue.

Until recently, USA-based AIDS researchers and activists have tended to regard the denialists with derision, assuming they would gradually fade away. Unfortunately, this has not happened: The recent publication by Harper’s Magazine of an AIDS denialist piece by Celia Farber has brought the topic back into the mainstream media. There is now a real risk that a new generation of Americans could be persuaded to believe that HIV either doesn’t exist or is harmless, that safe sex isn’t important, that they don’t need to protect their children from this deadly virus. A resurgence of the denialists in the USA could, in turn, re-energize their friends in the Mbeki administration—further undermining the antiretroviral treatment rollout and exacerbating the global AIDS pandemic.

American and South African AIDS scientists and activists produced a detailed refutation of Farber’s article, exposing its multiple scientific inaccuracies and misrepresentations. Harper’s Magazine refused even to acknowledge the rebuttal, let alone admit to the inadequacy of its fact-checking process. Now, the battle has been taken to the denialists’ traditional territory: cyberspace. A new website (www.aidstruth.org) presents the scientific flaws in their arguments, and provides information on HIV and AIDS with links to other bona fide sources. Cyberspace has long been an environment where peer-reviewed science is less available or less appealing than misinformation posted by the denialists to fool the unwary and suck the vulnerable into a web of lies and deceit. President Mbeki infamously became an AIDS denialist by surfing the net; Christine Maggiore’s crazy theories are promoted aggressively in the same arena. Perhaps if the truth had been posted more prominently on the internet back in 2000, South African AIDS policies would have been logically formulated and sensibly applied, just as they have been in neighboring, poorer countries.

It is sad when selling magazines and vitamin pills is considered more important than promoting public health, when lies prevail, truth ignored. The truth is that HIV does exist, that it causes AIDS and that antiretroviral drugs can prevent HIV transmission and death from AIDS.