HIV deniers should be jailed: researcher
Head of AIDS body slams fringe movement

ANDRÉ PICARD
Public Health Reporter

Montreal -- Those who contend that HIV does not cause AIDS are criminally irresponsible and should be jailed for the menace they pose to public health, one of the world's top researchers says.

Dr. Mark Wainberg, president of the International AIDS Society, said yesterday there is little doubt that the statements of HIV deniers have caused "countless" individuals to contract the deadly immunodeficiency virus.

"People have died as a consequence of the Peter Duesbergs of this world," he said, singling out the guru of the fringe movement. Dr. Duesberg, a biochemist at the University of California at Berkeley, argues that HIV is harmless and that AIDS is caused by drugs, including those used to treat HIV. What angers public-health advocates most is the dissident's view that condoms and safe sex are "irrelevant."

Dr. Wainberg said he believes in free speech, but limits to free speech are justified when it grossly undermines public-health efforts.

"If we could succeed and lock a couple of these guys up, I guarantee you the HIV-denier movement would die pretty darn quickly," he said in a fiery speech at the closing of the annual conference of the Canadian Association for HIV Research, being held in Montreal.

Dr. Wainberg, a renowned researcher who has become an activist in his role as head of the largest international AIDS body, has in the past dismissed HIV deniers as "crazy kooks who should be ignored the same way we should ignore Holocaust deniers." But, lately, he has mounted a public rhetorical crusade.

There are two reasons for the change of heart. Domestically, the McGill University researcher has been angered by publication of The Virus Within, a book by journalist Nicholas Regush that argues AIDS is caused by herpes virus 6, not by HIV.

Internationally, Dr. Wainberg is troubled by the fact that the President of South Africa, one of the countries hit hardest by HIV-AIDS, has publicly endorsed the views of Dr. Duesberg.

President Thabo Mbeki has lashed out at those refusing to debate the cause of AIDS for waging a "campaign of intellectual intimidation and terrorism" and has likened their intransigence to the "racist apartheid tyranny we opposed."

Dr. Wainberg disagrees, saying that to even debate the question "Does HIV cause AIDS?" leads to irresponsible sexual behaviour and prompts those undergoing treatment to abandon their medications.

He told delegates that, in other matters of public health, such as smoking, the debate would not be tolerated.

TORONTO

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