On the Brink of Denialism: Why Peter Duesberg is Wrong and David Crowe is a Liar

Here is a real gem.

Onnie Mary Phuthe, an HIV+ woman from Botswana, wrote to South African AIDS Denialist Anthony Brink to ask about the organization Rethinking AIDS. The exchange is posted at AIDS Myth Exposed.

Brink’s response reminds me of a conversation I had with him while he was in Berlin attending an AIDS Dissident's Conference. I asked Brink about Peter Duesberg and he replied that Duesberg was washed up – old hat. The new ideas in AIDS dissidence were coming from contemporary scientists like Etienne de Harven. That seemed remarkable seeing as Peter Duesberg is 73 years old and de Harven is even older at age 81! Ah, the new ideas of AIDS Denialism.

Yet, I often wondered what Anthony Brink felt deep down about Rethinking AIDS and the people I had come to know as North America’s leading AIDS Deniers. Brink after all is responsible for feeding AIDS Denialism to the suspicious intellectual and former South African President Thabo Mbeki – ultimately bringing 300,000 of his fellow countrymen and 30,000 babies to their unnecessary deaths. Now Anthony Brink gives us some insight through his reply to Onnie. It
humoursly shows the infighting among AIDS Deniers, especially the Perth People and Duesbergians. This is worth a read. But be ready, Anthony Brink is not thrifty with words.

Shooting a Moon at AIDS Denialism

Twenty-eight years after identifying the first cases of AIDS and 13 years since highly effective combinations of antiretroviral medications made HIV infection manageable, there are AIDS Deniers who actually believe HIV is a myth.

And 40 years since Neil Armstrong took man’s first step on the moon, there are people who still believe it was a hoax. AIDS Denial is just one of many types of denialism, all of which are bound together by mistrust and paranoia. Denialists universally expose cover ups and conspiracies in their effort to rewrite history. So here you go AIDS Denialists, meet your cousins the Lunar Landing Hoaxers.

Vocal Minority Insists It Was All Smoke and Mirrors
By JOHN SCHWARTZ, New York Times, July 13, 2009

They walk among us, seemingly little different from you or me. Most of the time, you would never know of their true nature — except that occasionally, they feel compelled to speak up.

Vito Mbeki?: AIDS denialism at the Italian Ministry of Health

A policy analysis raises the specter of AIDS Denialism in the Italian Health Ministry. The study examined official records and found numerous cases where an AIDS diagnosis is discussed independent of HIV infection.

The authors initially investigated epidemiological evidence regarding HIV infection and AIDS in Italy using only official data published by the Italian National Institute of Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanità) and by the Italian Ministry of Health (Ministero del Lavoro, della Salute e delle Politiche Sociali). The authors concluded that the Italian Ministry of Health appears to be convinced that HIV is not the [sole] cause of AIDS. The authors describe the serendipity of their findings:

“In the wake of the recent Nobel awards for Medicine, we wished to prepare an essay concerning the numbers of the AIDS epidemic in Italy and the efficacy of the Italian Ministry of Health’s policies to contain and fight the disease. We also wondered whether the Nobel awards could put an end to the polemics concerning the viral origin of AIDS with particular reference to the theses (often referred to as ‘AIDS denialism’) put forward by Prof. Duesberg et al. and Bauer. AIDS denialism refers to the views of a loosely connected group of individuals and organizations who deny that HIV is the cause of AIDS. To this end, a young student (MPG) preparing his bachelor’s thesis began to search the official documents of the Italian Ministry of Health (http://www.ministerosalute.it) and, after a thorough search, we came to a rather paradoxical conclusion: policies, guidelines, definitions and data provided for by the Italian Ministry of Health are indeed consistent with the hypothesis that AIDS could be independent of HIV infection.”
The authors go on to state: “according to the Ministry, AIDS can be diagnosed in the absence of signs of HIV infection; there is legal prohibition to communicate new HIV infections to referring physicians and Health Authorities as if HIV spread were not a threat to public health… no national registry of HIV infection is implemented; and AIDS is not classified among relevant infective diseases nor among infective diseases that are susceptible of control interventions; one fourth of pediatric AIDS cases is not imputable to mother–son transmission.”

"Speaking in Tongues": An Essay on AIDS Denial by John Boucher

I stood in the doorway waiting for ten minutes before I went back to see who he was talking to. I listened in the hall at the door to his office. I could hear him saying the names of his four brothers and one sister. I could hear him asking about snow and the vegetable garden. I heard him say, “Mama, I’ve got cancer.” I waited for Rex on our couch. We had picked it out as our third anniversary present to each other.

When Rex got off the phone he found me waiting for him on our couch. The couch we picked out / the couch we made love on / the couch we watched TV on / the couch we read to each other on / the couch we fought on / the couch we had our weekly check in with each other on / the couch we almost broke-up on / the couch I would wait on with my parents, to go to his funeral. The couch I finally had to throw out.