News reaches us of yet another farcical event in the life of the 'Rethinking AIDS' group. RA's media expert (sic), David Crowe has been trumpeting the news that Peter Duesberg and Celia Farber were supposed to collect "Clean Hands" awards from the Semmelweiss Society, as part of "Whistleblower Week in Washington". These awards come from a fringe group, and have no scientific or political significance. And yet even this non-event turned into farce, as it so often does when RA gets involved. We would like to thank Liz Ely for bringing us into the loop with another misrouted email (Hey Liz, are you being taught by Andy Maniotis?). In any case, you're doing a fine job as RA's new publicist, so well done on your first major project! It won't be long before you're as successful in this role as David himself was. We think back fondly to when he gave AIDSTruth such valuable help in winning the "Battle of the BBC" with his brilliantly judged, superbly timed press release!

Protests from the TAC and some individual gay men alerted the meeting organizers to the view that giving a whistle-blowing award to Duesberg and Farber would be akin to honoring Saddam Hussein for field-testing chemical weapons so successfully. As a result, the organizers finally did due diligence on just who they were dealing with, and decided not to make the award in public, fearing a hostile reaction from the audience. Farber and Duesberg had a "debate" about which of them was the most "radioactive" and whether either of them should withdraw to save the other, rather missing the point: Both of them have blood on their hands, particularly the blood of the South Africans that Duesberg so insultingly dismisses as "Schwartzes" and the gay men he calls “homos” (see here and here). We should never forget that Duesberg formulated the propaganda that Farber preaches, just as Tariq Aziz did for Saddam Hussein in their day.
We were also pleased to note that no less a luminary than Michael Geiger drove, uninvited, all the way from San Diego to Washington to take part in this oh so important event. But when he tried to make his views on HIV/AIDS known to the organizers, he was asked to leave the meeting he’d gate-crashed! Clearly, a “private meeting on sensitive political matters” is not a suitable environment for nutty old Michael. Never mind Michael, if you keep the receipts, RA will reimburse you for your gas, even when it's up there at $4 a gallon! And don't worry about the time you wasted making the trip, as you never do anything useful anyway (at least, not useful to the RA group).

And even Anthony "Tony Baloney" Liversidge tried to "contribute" to the events, phoning in his views on HIV/AIDS only to taken for an anti-Duesberg, South African AIDS activist! The confusion is hardly surprising as Anthony's views are always expressed so incoherently that nobody can ever understand just what he's trying to say.

The Semmelweis Society's involvement in this pathetic affair has a bitter irony. Dr. Semmelweis is remembered for his role in preventing mother to child transmission of lethal pathogens. In contrast, Duesberg and Farber are remembered for their efforts to kill new born children by restricting their mothers' access to the life-saving drugs such as AZT and nevirapine that prevent mother to child transmission of that lethal pathogen, HIV. If Dr. Semmelweis were alive today, he would be turning in his grave. Or perhaps the Semmelweis Society was acting satirically?

Finally, our sincere sympathies go to Celia Farber for the stress she suffered during her taxi ride from the airport to the hotel. It must be tough not to get an upgrade to the front seat of a Yellow Cab, Celia! Or are you just running out of cash for the fare nowadays, after we blew the whistle on the errors in your Harper’s Magazine article and exposed to the media world just how “radioactive” you truly are?

PS: AIDS Truth team members have since been in touch with various professional organizations linked to this awards ceremony, further explaining just what the RA group is and the nature of its perverse, anti-science, anti-health agenda. Doors are now slamming all over Washington, phones will go unanswered, lunches uneaten. This has been yet another political fiasco for the RA group, which never seems to realize that no rational person will ever give them the time of day, once the shroud of deceit is lifted and the reality exposed.