Sunday Times, South Africa - March 26, 2000
Laurice Taitz

This would not have been so contentious a statement had it not followed the October pronouncement by President Thabo Mbeki that the drug AZT is toxic, and that it would be irresponsible of the government to use it for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of the virus.

In light of the government's dismal track record in dealing with AIDS, it seems ironic that the decision not to provide AZT because of its presumed toxicity is considered a responsible move. The two announcements have sparked panic and incredulity among researchers and activists, because they give credence to the views of AIDS dissidents - an international group of "fringe" scientists who argue that HIV does not cause AIDS.

According to a report published in New York's Village Voice newspaper this week, this is a view that finds favour with Mbeki - or at least one he is looking at seriously.

The price to be paid for what at first glance may appear to be Mbeki's delight in combative debate, rather than his faith in the facts, may be inestimable. Already South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world. If that is not enough, the growing number of children being orphaned by AIDS should be.

While government spokesmen dispute the fact that the President favours the dissident view, Mbeki has not officially refuted it. And beyond our borders his mercurial approach to the AIDS question is drawing its fair share of attention. The Voice article, for instance, remarks that "South Africa's President may become the first world leader to believe that HIV is not the cause of AIDS".

The AIDS dissidents have so little credibility in the established science community that they are forced to use the Internet as their primary vehicle of expression. Their flagbearer is a man called Peter Duesberg, a molecular biologist at the University of Berkeley, California. Since the viral cause of AIDS was first proposed in 1983, he has disputed it. One of his more memorable statements is: "They have hyped up HIV into this super-rapist, but in reality the damn thing can hardly get an erection."

Though Duesberg's supporters do not seem to share a uniform view, other counterviews to the prevailing scientific wisdom on HIV and AIDS have generally been harnessed to the dissident cause. There are those who say the HIV theory is the greatest scientific fraud in history and that those who perpetuate it are guilty of "psychological murder".

Yet credible scientists and doctors worldwide dismiss such claims as "voodoo science", in the words of Dr Mamphela Ramphele, University of Cape Town vice-chancellor.

Lynn Morris, a vaccine researcher at South Africa's National Institute of Virology, is unequivocal: "There is no debate among scientists. HIV causes AIDS. The evidence is overwhelming and conclusive."

Yet the dissident view persists - at least in Mbeki's administration. Which is why it cannot be so easily dismissed by South Africans.

There are those dissidents, like molecular biologist Dr Charles Thomas, who claim: "If we said that AIDS didn't exist . . . it would disappear in the background of normal mortality."

Thomas and co also say the Food and Drug Administration - the US medicines regulatory body - has conspired with pharmaceutical companies, motivated by profit, to allow toxic drugs like AZT on to the market because of pressure on them to find a treatment.

The view that pharmaceutical companies are evil empires bent on ruling the world would sound almost kooky if it had not been so often repeated by a succession of South African health ministers - and Mbeki himself.

The dissidents, it seems, have all the questions but none of the answers, as the bodies piling up in Africa's mortuaries attest.

At the extreme end of the dissident scale there is Dr Kary Mullis, a Nobel prize-winning biochemist whose book Dancing Naked in the Mind Field documents his scepticism about the HIV theory, his passion for hallucinogenic drugs and his belief in flying saucers.

So far there has been no indication that Mbeki shares all of their views.

In response to a column that appeared in the Sunday Times in November, Thabo Masebe - spokesman to Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa - wrote that poverty, malaria and TB have broken down people's immune systems. He concluded that the fight against AIDS should therefore focus on "radically raising the standards of living of our people, rather than distributing drugs and concentrating too exclusively on the social behaviour of the individual African".

So far, the government seems to have managed neither. This week, presidential spokesman Parks Mankahlana said: "Let's not obsess with this petty foolishness. AZT is not a cure for AIDS, and besides, it's unaffordable."

The government's arguments against AZT's "toxicity" and its "affordability" appear to be interchangeable.

Mankahlana also said that the country's only hope is the AIDS vaccine which South African researchers - along with the rest of the world's scientists - are racing to find.

"What is important is that here we have a disease that there is no cure for. The President is saying let us all work together on this. And yes, there is going to continue to be confusion, but the person who's going to shut us up is the person who finds a cure." He added: "The President doesn't belong to any faction."

But it would be an act of supreme hubris for the government to put all its resources into the quest for a vaccine that cannot cure AIDS but may, at best, prevent future generations from getting it.
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