AIDSWEEKLY Plus; Monday, May 1, 2000
Prepared by AIDS Weekly editors from staff and other reports

Montagnier, commenting on a dispute over Pretoria's support for maverick AIDS experts, said in an interview he wanted to convince South Africans that the virus caused AIDS rather than criticize them for considering alternative theories.

South Africa, which is to host the world's most important AIDS conference in Durban in July 2000, turned the dispute into a diplomatic issue with a letter from President Thabo Mbeki to U.S. President Bill Clinton defending the much-criticized stand.

"I don't care whether people believe in the virus or not, the treatments [to control its effects] work," Montagnier, co-discoverer of HIV, told the Paris daily newspaper, Liberation.

"Let's focus on the tritherapies, which have given spectacular results and help keep people from dying," he said of the drug cocktail used to treat HIV patients.

South Africa caused controversy by inviting to the Durban conference maverick U.S. scientists Peter Duesberg and David Rasnick, who reject the scientific consensus that HIV causes AIDS. Embracing these scientists' stance, South Africa has refused to distribute the lifesaving drug AZT in public clinics even though studies show it can protect babies of HIV infected mothers.

Mbeki wrote to Clinton asserting his government's right to doubt whether HIV causes AIDS and to resist the "superimposition of Western experience on African reality."

Montagnier said it was worrying that South African authorities had taken up this revisionist stand but said he preferred to convince them of his view rather than clash.

More than 33 million people around the world are infected with HIV and 70% of them are in sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa estimates that 4.2 million of its people, or just under 10%, are infected with HIV.

A spokesman for Mbeki said the South African leader's letter to Clinton was to defend the right of Duesberg and the others to be heard, though he did not necessarily agree with them.

Montaigner said Duesberg was a "prisoner of his position" and noted that all AIDS patients carried HIV. He said he was open to seeking treatments more adapted to Africa, where officials say the AZT drug is too toxic.

This article was prepared by AIDS Weekly editors from staff and other reports.

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