HIV/AIDS: The Peril of Pseudoscience [MW Makgoba, Science 2000;288:1171]: This is a riveting report by Professor Makgoba who is President of the Medical Research Council of South Africa. He begins by recounting the sad list "of politically driven decisions regarding the South African AIDS crisis." The list includes South Africa's embrace of virodene, an inexpensive AIDS treatment with no scientific support, the government's refusal to give AZT to pregnant women, and the most recent endorsement of malnutrition and poverty as the cause of AIDS instead of HIV. He goes on to say that the Western experience has been identified by the President as irrelevant to AIDS in Africa, but he also points out the irony that the "misguided solutions" for the African AIDS problems are not Africans, but a loosely connected group from the West referred to as dissidents. He goes on to acknowledge that HIV causes AIDS and that there are "deep moral and ethical dilemmas with regard to sustainability of these HIV drugs in developing countries." His conclusion is that "… South Africans cannot afford to make any more mistakes lest history judges us to have collaborated in one of the greatest crimes of our times." posted 6/6/2000