by Martin Weinel (Originally published on Politicsweb.)

Almost every day governments around the world have to make political decisions that depend on scientific or technical knowledge. Where and how to store nuclear waste? How to respond to global climate change? Should a particular medicine be made freely available to the whole population or should its use be highly restricted or even banned? These and countless other 'science policy decisions' show that policy making is highly dependent on scientific knowledge.

by David Gorski
This post first appeared on Science-Based Medicine.

Before she became an HIV/AIDS denialist, Christine Maggiore was a successful businesswoman. In 1986, she started what ultimately developed into a multimillion dollar inport/export clothing company, Alessi International, which is based in Italy. However, her life changed in 1992, when during a routine medical examination she was found to be HIV-positive. Initially, she became involved with AIDS charities, including the AIDS Project and Women At Risk, but then in 1994 she met Peter Duesberg, the biologist who, arguably more than anyone else, started the whole phenomenon of HIV/AIDS denialism. By that time she also had had other HIV tests that varied from negative to indeterminate to positive, which had made her start to question whether she really had HIV. After being “converted” by Duesberg, she became an HIV/AIDS denialist and activist, founding Alive&Well, an organization dedicated to providing “information that raises questions about the accuracy of HIV tests, the safety and effectiveness of AIDS drug treatment, and the validity of most common assumptions about HIV and AIDS.” She herself refused to take antiretroviral drugs and discouraged other at-risk mothers from doing so–or from even permitting themselves to be tested for HIV–under the guise of “telling both sides.”

Not surprisingly, when she became pregnant with her second child Eliza Jane, she similarly refused to take antiretroviral drugs in order to decrease the risk of maternal-fetal transmission of HIV. Indeed, she even appeared on the cover of Mothering Magazine sporting her pregnant belly with the word AZT in a circle with a slash through it and the headline HIV+ Moms Say NO to AIDS Drugs. The issue featured Maggiore in an article entitled Safe and Sound Underground: HIV-Positive Women Birthing Outside the System and included other articles about AIDS, such as Molecular Miscarriage: Is the HIV Theory a Tragic Mistake? and AZT in Babies- Terrible Risk, Zero Benefit. (Mothering Magazine’s promotion of HIV/AIDS denialism and antivaccine misinformation may well make a topic for a future post in and of itself. Suffice it to say that Christine Maggiore was very much into “alternative medicine” and refused to vaccinate her children, making Mothering, which is well-known for its promotion of antivaccine views, the perfect venue for her.) After EJ was born, Maggiore refused to allow her to be tested for HIV and insisted on breast-feeding her, even though breastfeeding results in an unacceptable risk of virus transmission to the baby. The stage was thus set for the tragedy that was to come.

Luc MontagnierThe Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi for their work on the isolation of HIV (as well as Harald zur Hausen for the discovery of Human Papillomavirus as a cause of cervical cancer).

A brief history of discovery of HIV may be helpful in putting the recent awarding of the Nobel prize in perspective. There has been a great deal of controversy over the award recognizing the contribution of the French team while ignoring the contribution of the US/Gallo team. The real story of the history is not well understood by either the media or the public. Unfortunately, it seems that the Nobel Committee also lacks some of the facts, or has chosen are narrow interpretation of what was important in the early discoveries.

HIV denialists boast that they oppose the science-driven “AIDS orthodoxy,” and many people who distrust medicine find this self-ascribed rebel stance appealing. But the denialists paradoxically idealize the very “establishment” they claim to reject. This is manifested in a striking pattern of exaggerations and outright lies from denialists about their institutional positions, scientific qualifications, and publications, and their false and often fraudulent claims of support from legitimate scientists and doctors. Some of these lies are symptoms of denialists’ delusions that they are knowledgeable and important, while others are part of a systematic effort to deceive a vulnerable public. In both cases, the denialists’ lies about themselves are a dimension of their lies about HIV and AIDS.

Read the full article.

by William Gumede

This is a chapter from William Gumede's book Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC.

Part I

For too long we have closed our eyes as a nation, hoping the truth was not so real. For many years, we have allowed the HI virus to spread, and at a rate in our country which is one of the fastest in the world. – Thabo Mbeki, 9 October 1998

Now ... the poor on our continent will again carry a disproportionate burden of this scourge – would if anyone cared to ask their opinions, wish that the dispute about the primacy of politics or science be put on the backburner and that we proceed to address the needs and concerns of those suffering and dying. – Nelson Mandela, 13 July 2000

It is important that we recognise that we are facing a major crisis and that we want to invest as many resources as we did when we fought against apartheid. This is not a state of emergency but it is a national emergency. – Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 30 November 2001

As his international AIDS Advisory Council met for the first time, Thabo Mbeki mulled over the words of Irish poet Patrick Henry Pearse: ‘Is it folly or grace?’

by Robert K. Funkhouser
Posted to Amazon.com, Nov. 7, 2006

Serious Adverse Events. By Celia Farber. Melville House: 2006, Pp. 345

In Serious Adverse Events, activist-author Celia Farber combines the unproven claims of Professor Peter Duesberg with her own ignorance and manipulates the facts to produce a massive illusion that people not familiar with the issues may naively accept as true.

Even though the scientific understanding of HIV and AIDS is built upon solid, peer-reviewed research (thousands of peer-reviewed papers and over 40,000 HIV or SIV genetic sequences in Genbank), the author skillfully plants doubts about the validity of the science and the honesty of the scientists involved, employing phrases like: "wished or dreamed into existence", "retroviral faith", "entrapped millions of minds", "the core catechism", and so on.