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Mark Hoofnagle reviews Seth Kalichman's Denying AIDS for the Denialism Blog. He writes,

Seth Kalichman is a better man than I. Kalichman is a clinical psychologist, editor of the journal Aids and Behavior and director of the Southeast HIV/AIDS Research and Evaluation (SHARE) product, and he has devoted his life to the treatment and prevention of HIV. Despite a clear passion for reducing the harm done by HIV/AIDS, to research this book he actually met, and interviewed, prominent HIV/AIDS denialists. I confess I simply lack the temperament to have done this. To this day, when I read about HIV/AIDS denialists, and the the 330,000 people who have died as a result of HIV/AIDS denialism, I see red. I think violent, bloody thoughts.

Read the rest of the review

From POZ.
(Un)deniable Evidence
by James Wortman

A college professor takes on AIDS naysayers in his latest book.

Despite overwhelming scientific findings, some people remain convinced that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS and that antiretrovirals are toxic poisons. Led by vocal skeptics such as former South African President Thabo Mbeki and the late Christine Maggiore, AIDS denialism continues to flourish, especially with the help of the Internet.

To counter this strengthening movement, Seth Kalichman, PhD, a social psychology professor at the University of Connecticut, wrote Denying AIDS: Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, and Human Tragedy ($25, Copernicus Books), which examines AIDS denialism’s origin, agendas and potentially damaging influence on HIV prevention and treatment.

Kalichman believes that the scientific community’s decision to stay quiet over the years has only fueled the denialists’ power. “[For too long] scientists have believed that if you ignore the denialists, they will go away,” he told POZ. “The HIV community really has a role in combating this misinformation.”  

This is an extract from Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, Published by Harper Perennial 2009. You are free to copy it, paste it, bake it, reprint it, read it aloud, as long as you don’t change it – including this bit – so that people know that they can find more ideas for free at www.badscience.net.

The Doctor Will Sue You Now

This chapter did not appear in the original edition of this book, because for fifteen months leading up to September 2008 the vitamin-pill entrepreneur Matthias Rath was suing me personally, and the Guardian, for libel. This strategy brought only mixed success. For all that nutritionists may fantasise in public that any critic is somehow a pawn of big pharma, in private they would do well to remember that, like many my age who work in the public sector, I don't own a flat. The Guardian generously paid for the lawyers, and in September 2008 Rath dropped his case, which had cost in excess of £500,000 to defend. Rath has paid £220,000 already, and the rest will hopefully follow.  Nobody will ever repay me for the endless meetings, the time off work, or the days spent poring over tables filled with endlessly cross-referenced court documents.

In what is surely a serious blow to AIDS denialists, researchers have published video microscopy of HIV transferring between T-cells:

Under South Africa's previous administration, the country's health department failed to act against vitamin entrepreneur and AIDS denialist Matthias Rath, when his foundation conducted unauthorised clinical trials and distributed vitamins to AIDS patients, while advising them to stop taking antiretroviral drugs. The Treatment Action Campaign took successful legal action, and the Court ordered the state to take action against Rath. Now, the era of denialism seems finally to be over, as the Department of Health (under a new Minister) has informed the TAC that criminal cases have been opened as a result of its investigation of Rath. Here is the TAC's press release:

In the light of recent developments, we have addressed the myth that HIV cannot be detected post-mortem on our Debunking denialist myths page.

Myth #15: HIV cannot be detected post-mortem

HIV can be detected post-mortem with a high degree of accuracy. This is very important because deceased tissue donors need to be tested to ensure that tissue recipients are not infected with HIV. See:

• Preventing disease transmission by deceased tissue donors by testing blood for viral nucleic acid.

Christine Maggiore's death certificate states that the immediate cause or condition resulting in her death was disseminated herpes viral infection. Bilateral bronchial pneumonia is given as the underlying cause, and oral candidiasis is given as a significant condition contributing to death.   Based on her statements and her career, Maggiore was HIV-positive (see her book, and note that Alive and Well, the group she started, is described on its website as having been "founded in 1995 by a group of HIV positive diagnosed men and women").  In HIV-infected people, all of the above conditions are AIDS-defining opportunistic infections, and in combination they are hauntingly typical of AIDS in the years before ARVs.  Many people who have died of AIDS shared the same constellation of opportunistic infections that killed Ms Maggiore.