HIV IS THE ONLY CAUSE OF AIDS
It seems as though the so-called experts on AIDS have done a poor job at convincing the public that HIV is the sole and unequivocal cause of this dread disease. You would think that our case would be an easy one. After all, close to 40 million people worldwide are known to be infected by HIV, and AIDS is projected to become the world’s leading cause of death within the next five years. Indeed, the press has done an excellent job at reporting that over 4 million children in developing countries have already been orphaned because of loss of a parent to the AIDS epidemic, and that approximately 1,600 HIV-infected babies are born each day because the virus has been passed on to them by their infected mothers before or during birth.
     Yet, in spite of our knowledge, and, indeed, considerable scientific progress in the field, it seems as though the press is often anxious to present dissenting views to the effect that HIV does not cause AIDS, and stories appear in reputable newspapers virtually every week that make this point. Often spokespersons for fringe groups, with little or no scientific training or credibility, are asked to provide quotes on the subject.

Journalists’ Responsibilities
Take, for example, the recent case of a 37-year-old woman, identified as Ms. X, who is battling authorities over custody of her 3-year-old HIV-infected son, because his doctors want to treat him with anti-HIV drugs. The woman has refused to allow her son to be treated, and has repeated arguments that HIV is not the cause of AIDS and that the drugs used to treat AIDS are toxic.
     Why do journalists decide to do stories on these cases, and to present the so-called anti-establishment case, i.e. that HIV does not cause AIDS, as though it merited some degree of respect? After all, would these same journalists do stories on groups that advocated that cigarette smoking does not cause cancer or that a high cholesterol diet does not put one at risk for cardiovascular disease? Surely not, and if they tried to, their editors would stop those stories from being printed. In general, responsible journalists understand that there is a public health dimension to every medical story they write, and that they have a responsibility to participate in the prevention of disease.
     In contrast, HIV educators, physicians and scientists must constantly wage battle in support of the HIV causality of AIDS. How tragic, when one considers that the notion that HIV does not cause AIDS is most likely to resound well with the least educated and most vulnerable members of society, including street kids, the urban poor, drug users and members of aboriginal communities.

Parental Responsibility
The reality is that women like Ms. X should be held accountable for their actions. In brief, Ms. X, knowing that she was HIV-infected while pregnant, should have elected to herself take anti-viral drugs three years ago during her pregnancy. Had she done so, it is virtually certain that her son would today be both HIV-free and healthy. The recent conference on Global Strategies for Prevention of HIV Transmission from Women to Infants (Montreal, Canada, Sept. 1-6, 1999) reported that the use of just a single anti-HIV drug, Nevirapine, toward the end of pregnancy, could reduce the transmission of HIV from infected pregnant women to their babies by at least 50 percent. And the experience in the United States has been even better, with government statistics indicating a drop in the birthrate of HIV-infected babies by as much as 90 percent during the past decade, as virtually all HIV-infected pregnant women are now advised by their obstetricians to take a combination of anti-HIV drugs during pregnancy. Fortunately, the vast majority of HIV-positive women in our society have listened.
     Perhaps women like Ms. X are in denial because they are riddled with guilt, having failed to heed doctors’ advice on this subject. Perhaps they now have no choice but to deny the HIV/AIDS link in order to maintain some semblance of emotional stability. Or perhaps Ms. X refused to take anti-viral drugs during her pregnancy because she had read a newspaper article that gave credence to the notion that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS.

Equal Time
The reality is that our drugs have worked so well that the epidemic of new cases of pediatric AIDS in the United States has been virtually eliminated. The fact that these drugs work only by blocking the replication of HIV constitutes one scientific proof among many that HIV is the cause of AIDS. By all means, our attitude to people like Ms. X and to their families should be one of compassion. But let us also recognize that those who deny the HIV/AIDS link do little more than affront the memory of the millions of people who have already died of this disease.
     Should anyone really care what the so-called AIDS experts and members of the “AIDS establishment” have to say, if a good story opportunity comes up that entails giving equal credibility to the other side of this unfortunate debate? Too many journalists anxious to do these stories seem to think that the public health consequences of their articles are not their concern.