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Durban Declaration Rebuttal

A rebuttal to the "Durban Declaration"
published in Nature on July 6 2000.

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Compiled by Robert Johnston¹, Matthew Irwin, MD² and David Crowe³

In response to the views of dissident scientists who challenge the idea that HIV causes AIDS, an international group of scientists and doctors has released a manifesto called "The Durban Declaration" in an attempt to end debate on this critical world health issue. The journal Nature agreed to publish it in their July 6th 2000 issue. Earlier this spring, Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa, attempted to start a dialogue between orthodox AIDS scientists and the dissidents about HIV and AIDS in advance of the international AIDS conference in Durban, South Africa, from where the declaration gets its name. However, orthodox AIDS scientists refused to participate in the dialogue. They chose instead to sign a declaration restating their consensus position that HIV is the accepted cause of AIDS and accusing the dissidents of threatening "countless lives", implying that they must be silenced. Included in this rebuttal is the full text of their manifesto, along with interlinear comments that show how orthodox claims about HIV and AIDS have been repeatedly contradicted in the medical and scientific literature.