Politics and Policy of HIV/AIDS

In recent years at the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley, SPH Professor Malcolm Potts has invited Dr. Duesberg to speak in the introductory HIV/AIDS course. Lone among the guest speakers each year, Peter Duesberg’s lecture can draw raw skepticism out of otherwise mild grad students. He’s an HIV-AIDS non-believer; formerly as advisor to President Mbeki, he opposed antiretroviral rollout and was partially responsible for the generally delayed South African government response to the HIV epidemic. His name still raises the hackles of many researchers in the AIDS industry. Duesberg himself is quick to point out that, as a result of his HIV/AIDS theories, his previous work on retroviruses is suspect, his personage a pariah at many conferences, and the search for research funding often pointless.

At Berkeley, every year eager graduate students challenge Duesberg on the epidemiology, biology, and sociology of HIV. The exchange sharpens students’ awareness, calls on their new knowledge of the pertinent fields, and generally aids in development of critical faculties. What is useful in the context of a larger pedagogical experience, however, may be not appropriate presented alone, without information to balance perspectives.

Richard Kim in The Nation reports on Harper’s presentation of Celia Farber’s piece (“Out of Control: AIDS and the Corruption of Medical Science“) which goes to some length, according to Kim, to further Dr. Duesberg’s long discredited theories regarding the disconnect between HIV and AIDS. What was missing apparently was the sort of material that Dr. Potts’ students are presented in the other lectures aside from Duesberg.

Kim provided the missing links, posted below, as a beginner’s guide to understanding the fallacies of the AIDS Denialists.

AIDS Denialists: How to Respond

Answering the AIDS Denialists: CD4 (T-Cell) Counts, and Viral Load

Science: The Controversy over HIV and AIDS

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Filed under: Epidemiology