The Nation, among others, takes note of latest issue of Harper's Magazine
contains a stunning 15-page article by well-known AIDS denialist Celia Farber (formerly of Spin magazine) that extensively repeats UC Berkeley virologist Peter Duesberg's discredited theory that HIV does not cause AIDS.
Harper's irresponsible action is important because, as reported in Gay City News: "AIDS denialism directly kills a lot of people," said Nathan Geffen, policy coordinator at the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa. "It's disgraceful and it needs to be stopped."
Please e-mail Harper's (letters@harpers.org) to demand an apology and retraction.
Continued below the fold
Douglas Ireland observes that:
Farber is an old campaigner for the gaggle of theories that in the AIDS community are generally labeled "denialist" (some kind souls prefer the term "AIDS dissidents.") These theories all insist that HIV -- the Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus, is NOT the cause of AIDS. This sort of crackpot thinking has been around ever since HIV was first identified as the cause of the epidemic -- and there's not much new in Harper's from Farber, who's back on her old hobbyhorse.
The Gay City News article (link again here) provides a summary of the article. Richard Kim writes in The Nation that among the denialist claims that Farber recounts approvingly are:
- AIDS is actually a "chemical syndrome, caused by accumulated toxins from heavy drug use."
- "Many cases of AIDS are the consequence of heavy drug use, both recreational (poppers, cocaine, methamphetamines, etc.) and medical (AZT, etc.)"
- "HIV is a harmless passenger virus that infects a small percentage of the population and is spread primarily from mother to child, though at a relatively low rate."
- "75 percent of AIDS cases in the West can be attributed to drug toxicity. If toxic AIDS therapies were discontinued...thousands of lives could be saved virtually overnight."
- "AIDS in Africa is best understood as an umbrella term for a number of old diseases, formerly known by other names, that currently do not command high rates of international aid. The money spent on anti-retroviral drugs would be better spent on sanitation and improving access to safe drinking water."
Kim offers the following as "the best rebuttals" to these claims:
Douglas Ireland
comments:
The fact that Harper's would publish Farber's article is testament to her narrative gifts and to the sheer laziness of the editors. Unlike the hoaxes perpetuated on the New Republic by Stephen Glass, Farber's views are well-known and have been debunked for all to see all over the internet. Did these editors not talk to anyone besides Celia's list of "scientists?" Any discussion with any legitimate researcher or clinician would have blown Celia's cover in three seconds. It is sad that fifteen pages are devoted to Celia's ravings in Harper's--we can't get more than a paragraph on the real issues around the epidemic, here or abroad, in most publications in the USA.
And Celia and her ilk are not dissidents-please, please, don't wrap them in the mantle of a Sakharov or a Mandela, men and women who have struggled against tyranny and lies-they are a peculiar phenomenon, individuals and groups which believe that evolution is a "theory;" or a hundred years ago, pulled out tape measures and calipers to demonstrate the racial inferiority of the Negro or the Jew.
Laurie Garrett, the only journalist every to have won all of the Big 3 journalistic prizes: the Polk, the Peabody, and the Pulitzer, and of whom Ireland writes she was "the single best reporter on the AIDS epidemic ever to come down the pike, breaking important stories on both the medical and political aspects of the AIDS fight when the New York Times was still barely noticing the disease, and continuing to do so for years," has this to say:
"Harper's got hornswaggled. They thought they had a scoop, but it was tired old BS dredged up from the bad old days."
As the consequences of the Harper's article literally can be deadly for anyone afflicted with HIB-AIDS who gives it any belief, it is vitally important that Harper's hear from the netroots that we take seriously their shameful, irresponsible action.