Countering AIDS Denialists on the Web
June 19th, 2007 Placozoan Posted in News |
UNFORTUNATELY THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION is not the only target of superstition and pseudoscience. In the current issue of Science I ran across a short article reporting on a web site that aims to collect information about the link between HIV and AIDS and profiles on the key figures who deny that this link exists. These people, known as AIDS denialists, claim that HIV is an innocuous virus and AIDS is brought on by stresses such as malnutrition and by the very drugs used to suppress HIV. It is bad enough when their unscientific views harm their own families, but AIDS denialists are making progress advancing their opinions in Africa in AIDS-endemic areas. Many organizations in Africa are attempting to educate people about the modes of transmission of HIV, encourage the use of condoms, and administer antivirals to people with HIV to slow disease progression and prevent prenatal infections. The denialists are working directly against these goals. It is our hope that AIDSTruth will help counter their misinformation.
June 19th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Another good website listing the multiply independent cross-confirming lines of evidence which establish the HIV/AIDS link: http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/evidhiv.htm
June 19th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
A little known fact is that Phillip E. Johnson, widely regarded as the father of the Intelligent Design movement is also a denier of the link between HIV and AIDS.
June 19th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Tom Bethell is another IDiot who is skeptical about the AIDS/HIV link. These folks make the 9/11″Truthers” look like careful and deliberative thinkers.
June 20th, 2007 at 2:46 am
I noticed the cite of your blog at NRO, and I’m pleased to have found it. Sometimes I feel awfully lonely, alienated from fellow conservatives because I believe evolution actually happens, and alienated from fellow evolutionists because I believe conservatives have a measurable IQ after all.
It would be easy enough to go along with the conservative movement — after all, we agree 90% of the time.
I don’t for two reasons. Firstly, there’s this little matter of truth, and secondly, as I note in my blog, bad theories kill people.
June 20th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Only as a matter of accuracy in language, not as any sort of defense of their ideas, wouldn’t it be more accurate to refer to these people as “HIV denialists” rather than “AIDS denialists?”
I say this because I’m bugged by people throwing around the term “global warming deniers” to include anyone who questions that human activity is the primary or dominant cause of the slight warming trend of the past 30 years. “Global warming denier” implies that these people deny that such a warming has occurred at all, rather than that human activity is the primary or dominant cause of the phenomenon. This language is carefully chosen so as to try to make such people seem as stupid as possible, and to put them at a disadvantage right from the beginning in any discussion.
So I’m wary about people who use the same tactic with HIV and AIDS. A correct argument or explanation does not need any assistance from deliberately obfuscatory language. Are these people denying that AIDS exists as a disease? If not, I’d suggest not calling them “AIDS denialists.” If they are admitting that AIDS exists as a disease, but arguing that HIV is not its cause, would it not be more accurate to call them “HIV denialists” instead?
Again, I’m not defending their beliefs, because I don’t share them. I’m just unwilling to stoop to the rhetorical level of the left in attaching inaccurate or deliberately misleading labels to people simply to make rhetorical points by mischaracterizing what they’re saying.
Yes, I’m a noob, but I’m not trying to start off by being disagreeable. If I’m wrong or arguing unclearly, please correct me.
June 21st, 2007 at 11:54 pm
“HIV denier” is equally confusing because most of the AIDS deniers accept that a virus called HIV exists, they just assert that it is a harmless passenger virus.
The exact term would be something like “‘HIV causes AIDS’ deniers”, but that is far too unwieldy for regular usage.
As long as everyone knows what is being discussed it doesn’t matter much. And frankly the AIDS deniers long ago burned whatever right they had to ultra-polite treatment. “Murderous pseudoscientists” would be a perfectly fair description IMO.
June 23rd, 2007 at 7:49 pm
“Are these people denying that AIDS exists as a disease? If not, I’d suggest not calling them “AIDS denialists.” If they are admitting that AIDS exists as a disease, but arguing that HIV is not its cause, would it not be more accurate to call them “HIV denialists” instead?”
I’ve seen both used, but used “AIDS deniers” because that was used in the Science article I linked to and I believe is more common.
They truly are AIDS deniers. They deny that AIDS is a single disease with one cause and instead blame instances of AIDS on a variety of causes such as malnutrition, side effects from antivirals, or even separate diseases such as tuberculosis or cancer. For instance, when Christine Maggiore’s daughter died she denied that her daughter had AIDS and blamed her death on an allergic reaction to an antibiotic. AIDS? No such thing!
June 24th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
Karl Lembke, you know that Darwin Central has a forum for science-minded conservatives…
June 30th, 2007 at 2:52 am
Um…. I do as of June 20.
Why?
July 30th, 2007 at 10:06 am
My country, South Africa, has the highest number of HIV+ people on the planet - an estimated 7 million people.
AIDS denialists (or more accurately, those who deny a link between the HI virus and AIDS) have had an inordinate effect on the government’s response to the pandemic. in the mid 1990s, while the numbers of infected individuals was climbing steeply, President Mbeki surrounded himself with the likes of Dr. David Duesberg and Dr. Robert Giraldo, who questioned the link between HIV and AIDS. The South African government then stalled on the provision of anti-retroviral drugs to those whose disease had progressed to a stage where they required them.
The South African Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala - Msimang promoted a concoction made from olive oil, lemons, beetroots and African potato as a treatment for those with AIDS (until the University of Stellenbosch discovered that African potato contains a component that attacks the bone marrow). She has also endorsed the work of Dr. Matthias Rath, a vitamin salesman who promotes the idea that anti-retrovirals are in fact the cause of AIDS. Naturally, his extortionately expensive vitamin supplements, are promoted as the cure for AIDS. More importantly, the South African government continues to stall on the provision of ARVs to infected pregnant women. Whereas, without treatment, the infection rate amongst newborns is 22%, treatment can lower the infection rate to 2%.
Presently people are beginning to die in large numbers. This gives the illusion that the rate of infection is slowing down - a statistical fact that has been deliberately misinterpreted by the South African government.
The fact is that AIDS denialism has killed hundreds of thousands of my fellow citizens, and is likely to end up killing millions.
August 1st, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Okay. I guess I’ll go with whatever the consensus term is. It’s not like I’m a prescriptivist as far as neologisms are concerned.