AIDS Researchers Decry Mbeki's Views on HIV [Science 2000;288:590]: This "News of the Week" review in Science updates the information about South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki and his strategy for dealing with HIV and AIDS. This issue reached "primetime" with the Washington Post's publication of a letter from President Mbeki to President Clinton in which Mbeki questioned whether HIV is the cause of AIDS. Specifically, Mbeki claimed there was an "orchestrated campaign of condemnation" because he was seeking the views of AIDS dissidents such as Berkeley's Peter Duesberg who has challenged the role of HIV as the cause of AIDS since 1987. Mbeki went on to state that "we are now being asked to do precisely the same thing that the racist apartheid tyranny we opposed did, because, it is said, there exists a scientific view that is supported by the majority, against which decent is prohibited. The day may not be far off when we will, once again, see books burnt and their authors immolated by fire by those who believe that they have a duty to conduct a holy crusade against the infidels." M. W. Makgoba, the first director of the South Africa Medical Research Council concluded that the letter was "emotional and irrational" and that "this man will regret this in his later years. He displays things he doesn't understand." He goes on to say that Mbeki learned of the dissident position on HIV from the Internet, which Makgoba dismissed as "pure rubbish." The current plan is for a panel of about 30 AIDS experts to convene a discussion of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa which will apparently be attended by Peter Duesberg who is quoted as stating surprise that "there's a place left on this planet where you can ask commonsensical questions."
Comment: A great asset of the Internet, the ability to reach a global audience with extraordinary speed and without external review, is obviously one of its great liabilities, as illustrated here. The impact that this controversy will have on the Durban conference in July is not known. posted 5/25/2000