News

2 August 2010

ETV must stop airing dangerous Christ Embassy commercials

ETV is promoting quackery by airing Christ Embassy’s weekly info commercial at 7:30 on Sunday mornings. During the commercial the pastor who runs the church claims to faith-heal a number of diseases including cancer, heart disease and arthritis. Christ Embassy's website claims that Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, the proprietor of this church, can faith-heal HIV.

‘ETV's 3rd Degree has been outspoken against AIDS quackery and denialism and so it is disappointing that the station runs Christ Embassy adverts, which are quackery and a threat to public health,’ says Nathan Geffen, TAC Treasurer.

Many religious organisations are playing a critical role in the fight against HIV and TB in South Africa, raising awareness, providing spiritual and emotional support to people with these conditions and thereby helping them to adhere to the medications which cure TB and suppress HIV in the blood to restore people's health.

This is not the case with Christ Embassy. By claiming to heal life-threatening conditions, Christ Embassy is leading people to believe that they no longer have to adhere to treatment or seek appropriate medical care.

We recommend this article, "Conspiracy theories in science" by Ted Goertzel in EMBO reports.

Conspiracy theories that target specific research can have serious consequences for public health and environmental policies

Conspiracy theories are easy to propa­ gate and difficult to refute. Fortu­ nately, until a decade or so ago, few serious conspiracy theories haunted the nat­ ural sciences. More recently, however, con­ spiracy theories have begun to gain ground and, in some cases, have struck a chord with a public already mistrustful of science and government. conspiracy theorists—some of them scientifically trained—have claimed that the HiV virus is not the cause of aiDS, that global warming is a manipulative hoax and that vaccines and genetically modified foods are unsafe. these claims have already caused serious consequences: misguided public health policies, resistance to energy conservation and alternative energy, and dropping vaccination rates.

Read the rest of the article (PDF).

ScienceInsider reports:

The paper that cost the editor of Medical Hypotheses his job will have no further consequences for its main author, molecular virologist Peter Duesberg of the University of California (UC), Berkeley. The university has ended its misconduct investigation after concluding that Duesberg was within his rights when he wrote that there is no evidence of a deadly AIDS epidemic in South Africa.

Duesberg's paper, published online on 19 July 2009, triggered a storm of protests from AIDS scientists and activists. Elsevier, the publisher of Medical Hypotheses, has retracted the article and has terminated the contract of the journal's editor, Bruce Charlton of Newcastle University in the United Kingdom, who declined to introduce a peer review system at the 35-year-old journal.

Andrew Wakefield

The doctor who sparked the "MMR scare" and a hero of the anti-vaccination movement, Andrew Wakefield, has been struck from the medical register in the United Kingdom by the General Medical Council after being found guilty of serious misconduct. The GMC found that he had "abused his position of trust" and "brought the medical profession into disrepute" through "multiple separate instances of serious professional misconduct". The Guardian reports:

Andrew Wakefield, the doctor at the centre of the MMR scare, has been struck off the medical register after being found guilty of serious professional misconduct.

He was not at the General Medical Council (GMC) hearing to receive the verdict on his role in a public health debacle which saw vaccination of young children against measles, mumps and rubella plummet.

The GMC said he acted in a way that was dishonest, misleading and irresponsible while carrying out research into a possible link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, bowel disease and autism.

Simon Singh: Image credit: Gaius Cornelius (CC-A-SA)We reported previously on the libel action the British Chiropractic Association won in a lower court against esteemed British science writer Simon Singh after he called their claims that chiropractic could treat childhood diseases "bogus". The lower court had found that his statements were statements of fact, and that he therefore had to prove that the BCA knew that their claims were false when they made them. They have now abandoned their case against Singh after he won a key argument on appeal, namely that his article constituted comment and not statements of fact.

In a stunning indictment of the pseudoscience published in Medical Hypotheses, the journal's publisher has issued an ultimatum to the editor: implement peer review or resign. This comes after the retraction of two AIDS denialist papers that the journal published, which were unanimously rejected by five reviewers in a process managed by The Lancet. The papers,  “HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS: A new perspective” by Peter Duesberg and  “AIDS denialism at the ministry of health” by Marco Ruggiero, caused great concern in the scientific community and several prominent AIDS researchers wrote to the publisher expressing their concern. The retractions and Elsevier's decision to implement peer review at the journal will no doubt be held up by denialists as evidence of "censorship," but in fact illustrates that "dissident science" does not stand up to the scrutiny of peer review. Medical Hypotheses does not conduct peer review and had under the leadership of its present editor, Bruce Charlton, become a haven for pseudoscience of various kinds, including AIDS denialism.

Below are two reports on the publisher's steps to reform Medical Hypotheses.

Zoë Corbyn writes in Times Higher Education:

The editor of the journal Medical Hypotheses has been given until 15 March either to implement changes to adopt a traditional peer-review system, or to resign.

He has also been told that even if he stays with the journal, his contract will not be renewed at the end of the year.

As Times Higher Education reported in January, publisher Elsevier is attempting to rein in its unorthodox journal, which publishes papers on the basis of how interesting or radical they are rather than using peer review, after it published a paper last July that denied the link between HIV and Aids.

AidsTruth contributor and a leader of the Treatment Action Campaign, Nathan Geffen, has published a new book documenting AIDS denialism and the related quackery in South Africa titled Debunking Delusions: The Inside Story of the Treatment Action Campaign. We will publish a full review soon. More information can be found at the book's website. Below is the publisher's summary of the book.

Summary

One of the great, iconic struggles for social justice in the 21st century has been the campaign of the TAC against state-supported Aids denialism in South Africa. This struggle between activists, scientists and health workers, on the one hand, and a strange alliance of dissidents, quacks and political leaders, on the other, is here recounted in absorbing and dramatic detail for the first time by an insider. In his book Nathan Geffen, one of the TAC leaders, describes how early on in its life the organisation discovered that the greatest obstacle to AIDS treatment was in fact the South African government’s denialism. Not only did this extend to a reluctance to provide antiretroviral treatment to AIDS patients but also to support of a host of quacks and denialists who operated freely in the country to sow suspicion and confusion about the efficacy of standard medical treatment of AIDS. The most notorious of these were the German vitamin seller, Dr Matthias Rath, who along the way sued The Guardian of London and lost his case, and the Dutch nurse Tine van der Maas. It was the TAC that, as a result of a court case it brought against Rath, managed to stop his operations in South Africa; and it was the TAC, once again through legal means, that put pressure on the South African government to roll out an antiretroviral programme throughout the country. Geffen describes not only the TAC’s response to the puzzling intransigence of government and the spellbinding nonsense of dissidents, but the thought, strategy and discussion that lay behind the organisation’s major decisions. The story of the TAC’s campaign is one of the great triumphs of citizen activism for social justice and human rights. 

Elizabeth M. Whelan writes in the New York Post:

The media gave big headlines to this week's stories on a prestigious British medical publication's retraction of an article that had claimed to show a causal link between standard childhood vaccinations (measles, mumps and rubella) and autism.

Yet the coverage of the Lancet affair didn't truly convey the outrageousness of the original publication or the gravity of its consequences -- consequences long festering, since the paper was published not last week but 12 years ago.

Many of us in the scientific community recognized the "study" as junk when it appeared in 1998. Even before we learned of then-unknown ethical failings by its lead author, we knew the study was based on a tiny population of only 12 children. More, it relied on a novel methodology that assumed some bizarre, previously unheard of, association between children's autism and their manifestation of intestinal problems.

Nonetheless, the media back then seized on this story from a prestigious medical source -- and the scare picked up steam when TV appearances by actress Jenny McCarthy and a Rolling Stone article by Robert Kennedy Jr. blared word of the putative dangers of vaccines.

Rahul K. Parikh, M.D. writes on Salon.com:

The media trumpeted an irresponsible study, ensuring that its nasty legacy thrives

Feb. 05, 2010

This week, Dr. Andrew Wakefield's now infamous study linking the MMR vaccine to autism was finally retracted by the prestigious Lancet medical journal. The move came days after medical officials in the United Kingdom found the doctor guilty of multiple ethics violations. For doctors, this is a victory -- but a bittersweet one.

As a pediatrician, I grapple daily with what Wakefield wrought: parents who are twisted in knots -- to the point of tears -- about whether to immunize their child. In the 12 years since the publication of Wakefield's study, 10 of his fellow co-authors have denounced him, and an unremitting series of revelations have exposed just how corrupt his motives and methods were. Most important, multiple studies verified there is no link between the MMR (or any other) vaccine and autism. Meanwhile, infectious diseases once confined to medical history have broken out in our communities. To say the retraction is criminally overdue is an understatement.

Further, even as Wakefield's research is expunged from the scientific record, what he spawned -- a well-funded, vocal, even rabid movement -- will remain. Without him, poster girl Jenny McCarthy would have been abandoned in the MTV archives instead of smugly crowing to Time magazine, "I do believe sadly it's going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe. If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it's their f___ing fault that the diseases are coming back. They're making a product that's s___ ." And anti-vaccine darling David Kirby would split his time between running a P.R. firm and writing pithy articles about art and aircraft instead of turning speculation and rumor into a Kennedy-esque vaccine-autism conspiracy theory. Finally, Wakefield himself stands to be completely unaffected by both the U.K. medical community (which could revoke his license to practice there) and the Lancet's decision. He long ago settled here in the U.S. and successfully peddles his views through his Thoughtful House autism center in Texas.

The anti-vaccine movement, which shares characteristics with AIDS denialism (both like to blame pharmaceutical conspiracies) and which was originally based on claims by British surgeon Andrew Wakefield, has been dealt a decisive blow by a finding against Wakefield by the General Medical Council. Caims that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism have since been shown to be baseless, but are still promoted by some, including by groups linked to AIDS denialism. The Guardian reports:

Dr Andrew Wakefield, the expert at the centre of the MMR controversy, "failed in his duties as a responsible consultant" and showed a "callous disregard" for the suffering of children involved in his research, the General Medical Council (GMC) has ruled.

Wakefield also acted dishonestly and was misleading and irresponsible in the way he described research that was later published in the Lancet medical journal, the GMC said. He had gone against the interests of children in his care, and his conduct brought the medical profession "into disrepute" after he took blood samples from youngsters at his son's birthday party in return for payments of £5.

The Lancet has hailed the new approach evident in South Africa in which the government has decisively turned away from the AIDS denialism associated with former President Thabo Mbeki. 

The Lancet, Volume 374, Issue 9705, Page 1867, 5 December 2009

HIV/AIDS: a new South Africa takes responsibility

On Dec 1 the usual activities surrounding World AIDS Day will take on a special significance for South Africans. In a high-profile event in Pretoria, the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) is bringing together people who work in HIV/AIDS, those who have been affected by HIV, and government officials, including President Jacob Zuma, Deputy President and SANAC Chair Kgalema Motlanthe, and the Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi. Zuma will give a televised address on HIV/AIDS to the nation. Under the motto “I am responsible, we are responsible, South Africa is taking responsibility”, a new era in the country's response to HIV/AIDS is being publicly heralded. In a key-messages booklet, SANAC calls on everyone to know their HIV status by frequent testing; on communities to stop stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV; and on itself to ensure that the government is taking responsibility for people to receive counselling, provide condoms, and give access to treatment for tuberculosis and HIV.

Already on Oct 29, in what has been widely praised as a landmark speech, Zuma left no doubt about the decisive departure from the previous government's stance of denialism and indifference: “South Africa must work harder to implement the national strategy to tackle HIV/AIDS…all South Africans need to know their HIV status and be informed of the treatment options available to them…there should be no shame, no discriminations, and no recriminations”. The non-governmental organisation Treatment Action Campaign called Zuma's speech, which came almost 10 years after Thabo Mbeki made his HIV/AIDS denial clear before the same National Council of Provinces, as “one of the most important speeches in the history of AIDS in South Africa”.

Rob Sharp reports in The Independent on the presistence of AIDS denialism

A middle-aged man walks into an East London café and apologises for being late. With his clipped hair and bus-driver's uniform of thick overcoat, shirt, and branded tie, he looks like any other public service employee. But soon he delivers a speech of startling ferocity against the medical establishment.

Mike explains that he runs a London-based health website on which he posts articles and links to information that questions whether HIV causes Aids, disputes the existence of HIV, and denies the fact that unprotected sex helps to spread it. He offers support for those who, he says, are "negotiating with medical authorities over taking a different approach to dealing with their circumstances." He claims to get thousands of hits on his site and has helped advise several people who have been diagnosed with HIV and are launching legal action against their local health authorities, in the belief that they have been unfairly treated by the doctors who are trying to help them.

Stephanie Law writes in the McGill Daily:

Christina Maggiore died of an AIDS-related illness on December 27, 2008. She was a successful businesswoman who started a multimillion-dollar import/export clothing company, and a freelance consultant for U.S. government export programs. Maggiore is most notorious for her role as an HIV-positive activist who promoted the idea that HIV is not the real cause of AIDS. She was an HIV-denialist.

Maggiore was diagnosed with HIV in 1992. In 1994, she met Peter Duesberg, a molecular biology professor at the University of California at Berkley. Duesberg convinced Maggiore that HIV does not lead to AIDS. A year later, Maggiore started one of the largest networks of HIV-denialists and skeptics, called Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives.

Maggiore refused antiretroviral treatment for HIV because she did not think HIV would lead to AIDS and AIDS-related illnesses. She did not take the recommended treatment for pregnant HIV-positive women to prevent mother-to-child transmission. Her child died at the age of three from Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia. The Los Angeles County coroner and various other independent pathology experts concluded that the death was a direct result of her untreated HIV that had progressed into AIDS.

Talha Burki writes in The Lancet Infectious Diseases:

Strange, perhaps, for The Lancet Infectious Diseases to review House of Numbers. It is a threadbare documentary that claims there is no connection between HIV and AIDS. It arrives at this conclusion through a toxic combination of misrepresentation and sophistry. At best, it is a misguided and misbegotten film; at worst, it is downright malevolent.

All of which makes a fine case for ignoring it. HIV/AIDS denialism is an ideology in disgrace; the ravings of what Stephen Lewis—former UN Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa—describes as a “lunatic fringe”. To debate House of Numbers is to attend the film with an honesty and dignity that is entirely alien to its nature. Far better to leave it mouldering in the clutches of cranks and conspiracy theorists.

The World Health Organization's report Women and health: today's evidence, tomorrow's agenda identifies HIV/AIDS as the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age: "Globally, the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age is HIV/ AIDS. Girls and women are particularly vulnerable to HIV infection due to a combination of biological factors and gender-based inequalities, particularly in cultures that limit women’s knowledge about HIV and their ability to protect themselves and negotiate safer sex."

Here is an extract from the report:

This section is copied without footnotes or graphs. To download the full report, see below.

Women and HIV/AIDS

Globally, HIV is the leading cause of death and disease in women of reproductive age. Of the 30.8 million adults living with HIV in 2007,a 15.5 million were women. The prevalence of HIV infection in women has increased since the early 1990s and is most marked in sub-Saharan Africa.

Total number of people living with HIV/AIDS in 2007 was 33 million, including two million children younger than 15 years.

Southern Africa is most affected; in 2005–2006, median HIV prevalence among pregnant women attending antenatal care was above 15% in eight Southern African countries. Infection was acquired primarily through heterosexual transmission.

South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper reports:

"In 11 years -- from 1997 to 2008 -- the rate of death has doubled in South Africa. That is obviously something that cannot but worry a person," Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi told reporters at Parliament in Cape Town.

He said that in 1997 the total number of deaths stood about 300 000. Last year the figure was 756 000.

Motsoaledi said the figures called for a "massive change in behaviour and attitude" toward Aids among South Africans.

"On the figures, it's shocking. As to whether it has been affected by what we did in the past 10 years, to me that's obvious," he said, according to the South African Press Association.

Read the full article.

The Treatment Action Campaign's statement on the South African president's unequivocal repudiation of AIDS denialism in a speech to the upper house of the country's parliament:

Yesterday, President Jacob Zuma made one of the most important speeches in the history of AIDS in South Africa. In front of the National Council of Provinces (NCOP), he unequivocally acknowledged the devastation of AIDS on our country. With this speech state-supported AIDS denialism has been banished. The Treatment Action Campaign welcomes the ushering in of this new era, almost exactly ten years since former President Mbeki made a speech that began the era of state-supported denial in front of the NCOP.

Joe Sonnabend writes in his POZ blog:

House of Numbers is the title of a documentary film which according to its promotional material will "rock the foundations on which all conventional wisdom on HIV/AIDS is based"

I have seen the film. It is completely unable to achieve this grandiose objective. It is in fact an AIDS denialist film, despite the contention to the contrary by Brent Leung who made it.

The denialists are a disparate group who remarkably continue to believe that HIV cannot be the causative agent of AIDS either because it is harmless or because it does not exist. There are even those who believe that AIDS itself does not exist as a distinct disease entity. Of course there is no shortage of people with strange views that fly in the face of solid evidence. We can mostly just ignore them. But sometimes these views can be dangerous, and then we really do have to confront and challenge fallacious assertions that can lead to harm.

AIDSTruth contributor Nicoli Nattrass and Seth Kalichmann, author of Denying AIDS were among the scientists and activists who participated in Harvard University's symposium on AIDS Denial. The Harvard Gazette reports:

People who deny that the HIV virus causes AIDS continue to persist in their beliefs despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, nurtured by the broad reach of the Internet and cherry-picked scientific claims, AIDS authorities said Monday (Oct. 19).

Researchers from Harvard, elsewhere in the United States, and South Africa convened at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts to decry HIV “denialism,” saying that the continued questioning of HIV’s role in AIDS harms those infected with the virus by discouraging both testing and treatment.

According to the speakers, denialism takes two major forms. Some skeptics deny that HIV plays a role in AIDS, or that it even exists, while others believe in AIDS conspiracies, acknowledging that HIV causes AIDS but questioning HIV’s origins, saying it results from a government conspiracy, is intended as a genocide campaign against blacks, that it was created in CIA labs, or is of other sinister origin or purpose.

The Spectator's editor, who has in the past questioned climate change, has now started "Questioning the AIDS consensus", inspired by the denialist film House of Numbers.

Update: Now Neville Hodgkinson writes in The Spectator "on a new film that challenges the tenets of the Aids religion and exposes the dangerous confusion at the heart of the industry".

New Statesman's Mehdi Hassan writes:

I have blogged before on the new Spectator editor Fraser Nelson's crude denialism of climate change and his failure to engage with the peer-reviewed scientific literature. I see he has now turned his attention to questioning the link between HIV and Aids, in his Coffee House blog post "Questioning the Aids consensus". Here is how he puts it: