The News Editors

We note that your papers have reported on the recently released report on AIDS/HIV - i.e. President Mbeki's Aids Advisory Panel Report. We also note that you have carried comments almost exclusively from those who support the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS. We the undersigned, who are all members of the panel, would be most grateful if you would release our statement in one of your pages.

Press Release

Media must admit culpability in entrenching HIV causes Aids hypothesis

Media coverage of the Interim Report of the Presidential Aids Advisory Panel has been superficial and shows a complete deviation from balanced journalistic scrutiny expected in democracies. The time has come for the media to accept its culpability in entrenching HIV/AIDS dogma which has unleashed untold misery and suffering on millions of people in Africa and other parts of the world. The fact is that HIV/AIDS science is riddled with contradictions.

The media promotes anybody who questions the established thinking about Aids as denying a holocaust. One area of consensus in the panel was the impossibility of getting accurate statistics on the number of people dying in Africa from whatever cause let alone a virus which has yet to be isolated. This contradiction is reflected in the US-based Population Reference Bureau’s 2000 World Population Data Sheet released in August 2000. It estimated that HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa was 7.1% while at the same time reporting that it had the fastest-growing population of any major region in the world and Africa as a whole gained 250 million people!

The Interim Report deserves to be treated with the greatest care, attention and analysis possible. Instead, the media has dismissed the report with derogatory comments from supporters of HIV/AIDS and its own editorials. What we have seen is a number of common, but poorly substantiated conclusions.

The media has said that the report reflects a government stance that HIV causes Aids. This was stated by among others Professor Hoosen Coovadia on SABC SAfm on 4 April. No such statement was made anywhere in the report, nor was it made by the Minister of Health on the day she released it. In addition, Coovadia is not a spokesperson for government.

The message from the Minister of Health was clear and unambiguous: “PENDING THE OUTCOME OF FURTHER RESEARCH, the debates of the panel have not provided grounds for the government to depart from its current approach to HIV/AIDS problem”, she said.

This is the crux of the government’s statement clearly representing what was agreed at the end of the last panel meeting on 4 July 2000. The inference for anybody intelligent enough is that research still has to be carried out to falsify or confirm the hypothesis that HIV causes Aids.

In other words one could say that the proponents of this hypothesis have not proved their case. It is that simple and elementary. The reason why the media has failed to report this simplicity is that it is blinded by its own advocacy position from which it refuses to deviate. It is quite clear to the reasonable person that the media has painted itself into a hole of its own making from which it is incapable of escaping.

The media consistently promotes HIV/AIDS commentators as sane, highly professional and having the only valid viewpoint. The so-called dissidents are “crass”, “discredited”, promote “insanity” and are said to be “dangerous, even criminally so” for advising government to halt all HIV testing. Where is the evidence that anyone has died as a result of not having an HIV test? On the contrary, there are numerous reports of people testing HIV positive and being stoned, committing suicide, shooting their families and themselves and being thrown out to survive in sugarcane fields, among millions of people stigmatised as a result of testing positive for HIV.

It is monstrous that the media has trivialised the section of the Interim Report dealing with HIV testing. Once again, the report is clear and unambiguous: no evidence has been offered to prove that HIV tests can measure HIV infection. It is not insane and dangerous to advise government to halt all HIV testing. On the contrary it is erring on the side of caution and in the best interest of patients to do so pending the outcome of further research.

Then there is the repeated statement by the media that the panel proceedings wasted R2,3 million, which could have been better spent on condoms. Well, consider the US which according to the Congressional Research Services Report of November 6, 2000 had spent $93.2 billion on HIV/AIDS, with not one person yet being cured. This kind of funding by the US has been the major enforcer throughout the world of the HIV causes Aids hypothesis, which we re-iterate the Interim Report has been unable to verify. At a stroke, $93.2 billion, plus R2,3 million could eliminate all squatter camps in South Africa. Without this funding HIV/AIDS would die overnight, that is the justification for dissidents advocating redirecting funding at poverty alleviation, clean water and sanitation infrastructure instead of bolstering HIV/AIDS organisations which promote toxic and highly questionable drugs.

The media insists on quoting only HIV/AIDS proponents. Reports have highlighted quality control tests of the Medical Research Council and the US Centres for Disease Control in which about 2500 blood samples were shunted between South Africa and US laboratories at a cost of $75 000. The reports always quote Dr William Makgoba as saying this proves the “accuracy” of HIV tests because only 2 of 2447 samples differed. The fact remains that this exercise was nothing more than quality assessment to see if cooks receiving the same recipe in different continents can bake the same cake.

The media now really does owe it to its audiences to produce the overwhelming evidence to which it continually refers, especially the evidence that antiretrovirals confer better quality of life on HIV-positive patients, than those who are HIV positive and not taking antiretrovirals. The media must also demonstrate that apart from quality of life, longevity is also improved.

The fact remains that at the February 2001 8th Congress on Retroviruses in Chicago antiretroviral treatment was admitted as being so poorly understood that it led to a complete U-Turn from “Hit hard, hit early” to “delay for as long as possible until symptoms develop”.

The dissidents are being blamed for stalling progress in HIV/AIDS research, but it is the orthodox refusal to move from their position that is the real cause of slow progress. In light of the Interim Report and the upcoming experiments, the media must stop support for this unproven hypothesis and start positioning itself to reporting accurately and objectively on this tragic episode in mankind’s history.

Signed:

Prof. Sam Mhlongo, Dr. Val Turner, Dr. Eleni Papadopulos, Dr. Roberto Giraldo, Dr. Manu Kothari, Klaus Koehnlein; Prof. Gordon Stewart, Dr. Harvey Bialy , Dr. Dave Rasnick, Prof. Peter Duesberg, Prof. Charles Geshekter, Dr. Christian Fiala, Dr. Andrew Herxheimer, Prof. Etienne De Harven

MEMBERS OF PRESIDENT MBEKI's AIDS ADVISORY PANEL

TORONTO

tel/fax:(416) 406-HEAL

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