South Africa officials question cause of AIDS
---------------------------------------------

by S. Predrag
Bay Area Reporter
March 23, 2000
http://www.ebar.com

Source: Intaids <[log in to unmask]>

South Africa, a country with the fastest growing number of HIV-
positive cases (estimated at 1,600 a day), has shocked many scien-
tists and other concerned people by questioning the cause of AIDS.

It is hard to believe, but South African President Thabo Mbeki re-
cently called David Rasnick, a San-Francisco-based microbiologist,
already discredited among many in the scientific community for up-
holding a dissident view of AIDS.

Rasnick, Peter Duesberg and a few others are reportedly claiming
that there is no scientific proof that the HIV virus causes AIDS, and
that many people in Africa and other underdeveloped countries are in
fact dying because of malnutrition and a lack of sanitation. Finally,

these scientists are warning people not to use anti-HIV drugs as
they are harmful and may lead to AIDS.

At first, it seems that Mbeki sent a few written questions to Rasnick
and later personally telephoned him. The two apparently spent about10
minutes in deep conversation, alarming both local and world
scientists, and - understandably - many AIDS activists.

Raising doubts about the cause of AIDS and, in effect, calling for
a reappraisal of the link between HIV and AIDS as some high
government
officials in South Africa have done, has resulted in a sharp rebuke
from leading South African and international scientists. Their con-
cern is all the more greater as the 13th International AIDS Confer-
ence is scheduled to be held in Durban, South Africa, this July.

"HIV was discovered in 1983, 17 years ago ... we have accumulated
so much evidence of the link with AIDS - it is nonsense to try to
separate the virus and the disease," said the HIV discoverer and co-
discoverer of AIDS, Professor Francoise Barre-Sinoussi.  "Certainly,
people are not killed by the virus itself. But there is no doubt that
HIV initiates the process of immune deficiency," according to
Barre-Sinoussi of the French Pasteur Institute. She was speaking to
the press in Johannesburg where many leading researchers have
gathered to discuss the agenda for the upcoming AIDS conference.

Dr. Helene Gayle, a director with the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention in Atlanta, was also baffled by the calls of
some
South African politicians and doctors for a "re-examination" of the
causes of AIDS.  She found "no merit in questioning conventional
wisdom" and warned that "this virus moves quickly - the damage in
pro-
longed questioning and debating issues that have long ago been dis-
cussed and refuted is enormous."

"It's a national scandal," the president of the Medical Research
Council of South Africa, Malegapuru Makgoba, said of Mbeki's phone
call to Rasnick. Makgoba attacked the AIDS dissidents, calling them
"failures in their own countries" and warning that South Africa is
becoming "fertile ground for pseudo-science." Describing Mbeki's
questions as "trivial" and mind-boggling, Makgoba was quoted in the
influential South African weekly, the Sunday Independent, as saying
that the issue - what causes AIDS - has become "political rather
than scientific."  He warned that, "if politicians are seeking
consensus among scientists, that's the wrong approach. One of the
things that distinguishes politics from science is that in science we
never seek consensus ... in science you are either right or wrong."
Makgoba reminded the media that in September 1995, the U.S. National
Institutes of Health published a 61-page document refuting the
dissident theories point by point.

The Sunday Independent also quoted U.S. researcher, Dr. John Moore
of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York, as saying that

"Mbeki has given lifeblood to a dead cause." In a telephone
interview, Moore said that he was "flabbergasted" and that the matter
would be brought to the attention of "very serious levels in the US
government ... because [Mbeki] needs to get proper advice, from his
peers.  "To see these questions [the link between HIV and AIDS] re-
surging in a country where the AIDS problem is so much more serious
[than in the U.S.] is shocking and frightening; and to see the resi-
dent of a nation taking this seriously is a very shocking thing,"
warned Moore.  He compared the calls for a "re-examination" of what
causes AIDS as "tantamount to Holocaust denial because the implica-
tions are so serious ...

You should not try to steer government policy on a path that could
lead to the genocide of a nation."  When asked by a journalist
about Mbeki's "democratic right" to seek further information, Moore
re sponded, "It's the South African government's right to reinvent
the
wheel if they want, but these debates have been held and settled in
America and Europe 10 years ago."

Dr. Ruth Nduati, a pediatrician at the University of Nairobi, the
capital of Kenya, described Mbeki's actions as "unfortunate."
"It's taking us backwards, and it is our worry that such discussions
may unravel our significant gains in terms of managing the disease."
She  concluded that, "there is no doubt in my mind that HIV causes
AIDS."

The head of the AIDS unit at the National Institute for Virology of
South Africa, Lynn Morris, commented that "there is no debate
amongst scientists that HIV causes AIDS. This debate is being
generated by people on the fringe, in the lay press, and not by
people who are actively involved in HIV research."

The South African media have also published an e-mail sent by Dr.
Art Amman, a pediatrician and head of the US-based Global Strategies
for  HIV Prevention, to his international colleagues this week:
"After
reviewing the volumes of communication having to do with the Duesberg
disciples, personally listening in court for two days to these indi-
viduals, and surveying the damage they are invoking, I am trying to
reach some conclusions and think about a rational approach tolimiting
their future damage and influence."  Amman called on the scientific
community to publish "a denunciation of these individuals and their
theories as not credible, dangerous, and analogous to other
pseudo-scientific theories in the past which are taken up by
despots for nefarious intent, such as theories of eugenics and racial
superiority." "I find it curious there has been so little objection
from black African or U.S. leadership about a white-dominated
movement
like the Duesberg disciples, which is perpetuating a theory that is
resulting in the death of so many Africans," Amman stated.

Some AIDS activists continue to express a profound sense of dismay
at the news that the South African government is convening an
interna-
tional panel to reappraise the scientific evidence that the HIV virus

leads to AIDS.  Millions of HIV-positive people in South Africa are
concerned about the present AIDS polemics, especially when even top
government officials are raising doubts about AZT and other antiviral

drugs; claiming that they are harmful in fact.

Mbeki's government has already refused to provide free AZT to preg-
nant mothers and rape victims, claiming that the drug's "toxicity
could even exacerbate the symptoms of AIDS."

South African Judge Edwin Cameron, who recently declared that he
was HIV-positive, criticized his government's AIDS policy.
Addressing
the National Conference for People Living with Aids in Durban, he
said, "We are told that funding constraints limit the power of the
government to intervene and assist non-governmental organizations'
efforts. How then can it be that public funds, allocated to AIDS, are

not spent?"  Cameron pointed out that, "it was disturbing that 40
million rands [more than $8.5 million U.S.] of the funds allocated
to the department of health for spending on AIDS has not been used."

Cameron also attacked Dr. Ian Roberts, the special adviser to the
national minister of health, for holding "the brutal and cynical view
that it is not worth spending money on saving babies from AIDS
because they will soon die anyway." Most local and foreign analysts
agree on one thing though - the questions on the cause of AIDS need
to be settled once and for all before the 13th International AIDS
Conference in Durban.


Best regards,

Madiba.
--
"We are accustomed to live in hopes of good weather, a good harvest, a
nice love affair, hopes of becoming rich or getting the office of chief of
police, but I have never noticed anyone hoping to get wiser...."
............ Anton Chekhov.

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