AIDS denial

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Electron microscope image of HI viruses

As AIDS denial ( English AIDS denialism ) is denying the scientifically proven causal relationship of the HI virus and the immune deficiency disease AIDS called or the existence of AIDS at all. AIDS denial is a form of science denial .

HIV is well established as a cause of AIDS, as is the reliability of HIV testing and the benefits of HIV drugs. The scientific community accuses the AIDS deniers of ignoring current research results, of misquoting study data or even of inventing them freely, and for the most part having no clinical or experimental experience of HIV / AIDS of their own. The statements of the AIDS deniers are viewed as dangerous conspiracy theory , as they persuade laypeople to forego protective measures against HIV and to reject proven drugs. Numerous people have therefore already been infected and died. In Africa in particular (especially in South Africa , where around one fifth of the adult population is infected with HIV), AIDS deniers are accused of being jointly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people by influencing the Mbeki government.

At the World AIDS Conference in 2000, in the Durban Declaration, several thousand scholars summarized their views on the position of AIDS deniers as follows:

“HIV causes AIDS. It is unfortunate that a few continue to deny the evidence. This position will cost countless lives. "

Allegations made

As an alternative hypothesis on the cause of AIDS, Peter Duesberg initially assumed an abuse of poppers in the 1980s . After it became known that AIDS cases also occurred in people who had not consumed poppers, it was claimed that the abuse of other drugs such as methamphetamine , heroin and cocaine could also lead to AIDS.

After the anti-HIV agent AZT was established in antiretroviral therapy, it was viewed by AIDS deniers as a cause of AIDS.

In Africa, AIDS deniers claim that malnutrition and well-known diseases are the main causes. These have been reclassified to "AIDS".

Argumentation strategies

The AIDS deniers movement is made up of different individuals and groups whose arguments and ways of reasoning differ greatly in individual cases. The substantive arguments put forward by AIDS deniers have repeatedly been refuted as false, outdated or misleading by recognized scientific institutions. Despite the heterogeneity of the groups, there are often shared ideological positions and strategies of argumentation.

Some of the argumentation strategies used by AIDS deniers are similar to argumentation patterns that appear in other forms of denial of scientifically proven knowledge. Parallels can be drawn in particular with the denial of the Holocaust or the denial of the existence of mental illnesses, as advocated by parts of the anti- psychiatric movement.

AIDS deniers often associate their theory with distrust of scientific and medical institutions and authorities . They claim an anti-authoritarian stance and see themselves as “seekers of truth” who challenge the medical elite. Scientists are accused of representing the scientific consensus in order to obtain research funding and scientific recognition. The attribution of personal interests and the rejection of scientific authority are selective among scientists who represent the scientific consensus. Scientists like Peter Duesberg, on the other hand, who have expressed doubts about the consensus, are not assigned such interests and authority is not deprived.

The scientific community consensus on HIV / AIDS has been criticized as a "scientific dogma ". The scientific method on which this consensus is based is classified as a “religious discourse ” against which the AIDS deniers acted as “skeptics” and which they would expose as such. Evidence that contradicts their view suppresses AIDS deniers or reinterprets them as part of the scientific "conspiracy". The AIDS deniers would be rejected and persecuted by scientific " orthodoxy ". The preferred self-designation is often "AIDS dissident". Alternative hypotheses about the cause or treatment of AIDS would not be considered by medicine. Despite the lack of evidence for the effectiveness of alternative therapies (for example treatment with vitamins or the renouncement of antiretroviral medication), these are propagated. In contrast to the scientific community and HIV doctors, the representatives of these forms of therapy are not assumed to have any financial interest.

Another recurring argumentation pattern used by AIDS deniers is to change the criteria for recognizing the connection between HIV and AIDS (if these criteria have been met through scientific work) or to formulate them in such a way that they cannot be met. For example, AIDS deniers in the 1980s justified their doubts about HIV / AIDS with the relative ineffectiveness of the antiretroviral therapy at the time. When new antiretroviral agents were used in the 1990s, which led to a significant increase in survival rates, this was not recognized as evidence of a connection with HIV / AIDS, but instead this criterion was discarded. AIDS deniers also do not recognize other evidence criteria common in science. Thus, genetic and animal experimental findings that by researching the SIV virus were collected and suggest a causal relationship between HIV and AIDS, ignored or classified as irrelevant. Also epidemiological criteria for a causal link between HIV and AIDS, such as multiple independent correlations pointing to a common cause - the HIV virus - refer shall not be recognized.

AIDS denial in Africa

Thabo Mbeki, former South African president and AIDS denier

South Africa is one of the countries in the world hardest hit by the AIDS pandemic (see also HIV / AIDS in Africa ). About 20% of the population was infected with the HI virus when Thabo Mbeki took office (1999). Shortly after his appointment as president, Mbeki denied the scientifically proven causal connection between the HIV virus and the immunodeficiency disease AIDS. During his own research into the cause of AIDS on the Internet, Mbeki came into contact with websites of AIDS deniers and subsequently took similar positions. For example, he claimed that it is not the HIV virus, but poverty that is the most important cause of AIDS. Although the benefit of drugs to treat HIV infection and prevent the transmission of the HIV virus from infected pregnant women to their children has been proven, he denied this benefit and supported his Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang , who gave the sick olive oil , instead of antiretroviral drugs , Recommended garlic and beetroot . Mbeki set up the so-called “Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel” - an advisory body to the President to fight AIDS - and invited AIDS deniers like Peter Duesberg and David Rasnick to participate in this body. He also supported the German doctor Matthias Rath in his plan to sell vitamin preparations as drugs against AIDS. Despite considerable public protests from academia and AIDS activists, Mbeki maintained his position for the next several years. It was only after several legal disputes that the South African government was forced to give access to antiretroviral drugs to pregnant women infected with HIV and victims of rape. Also because of a court ruling, Rath's vitamin preparations may no longer be advertised as AIDS cures.

It is estimated that Mbeki's South African government's rejection of antiretroviral drugs resulted in the deaths of 330,000 to 343,000 people from AIDS and about 171,000 preventable new infections with HIV.

Other African governments are also ignoring the scientific consensus on HIV / AIDS and promoting alternative explanatory and treatment concepts. Gambia's dictator Yahya Jammeh advised the inhabitants of his country against taking antiviral drugs and claimed that the disease could be cured with psychic powers and herbs. In much of southern Africa , people rely on traditional healers who promise similar solutions.

AIDS denial in the US, Europe and Australia

One of the first AIDS deniers was the molecular biologist Peter Duesberg , director of the institute at the University of Berkeley . In 2000 he was a member of the AIDS commission set up by South African President Thabo Mbeki, which included both supporters and critics of the viral AIDS declaration. Another proponent of AIDS denial is Kary Mullis . In 1993, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of the polymerase chain reaction . After researching the New York Times , Mullis also questioned the scientific consensus on climate change and the ozone hole and expressed sympathy for astrology .

The biologist Stefan Lanka and Ryke Geerd Hamer ( Germanische Neue Medizin ) generally deny that there are disease-causing microorganisms. For Hamer, AIDS is a “ smegma allergy” after a “smegma trauma”. The doctor Matthias Rath sees the cause of AIDS diseases in a vitamin deficiency . The explanations have occasionally been linked to conspiracy theories . For example, a 2003 article in Zeitenschrift claimed that AIDS was an invention of the pharmaceutical industry ; Representatives of HIV research would thwart AIDS research and trigger AIDS by administering zidovudine (AZT).

State disinformation

In the 1980s, the Soviet foreign intelligence service KGB made targeted false claims about the origins of AIDS in a longstanding and successful disinformation campaign codenamed Operation Infection . The KGB claimed that AIDS was developed by the US military to kill people with dark skin. By 1987, the secret service managed to spread these claims in 25 languages ​​and 80 states, making US diplomacy in Africa much more difficult. The aim of the campaign was to divert attention from its own biological weapons program , which the Soviet Union continued to pursue contrary to a treaty concluded with the USA. In 1992 Russia admitted that the statements made in this campaign were false.

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Denying science . In: Nature Medicine . 12, No. 4, 2006, p. 369. doi : 10.1038 / nm0406-369 . PMID 16598265 .
  2. ↑ a b James Watson : Scientists, activists sue South Africa's AIDS 'denialists' . In: Nature Medicine . 12, No. 1, 2006, p. 6. doi : 10.1038 / nm0106-6a . PMID 16397537 .
  3. ^ A b Jon Cohen: The Duesberg Phenomenon ( Memento from January 6, 2004 in the Internet Archive ). In: Science . 266, No. 5191, 1994, pp. 1642-1644. doi : 10.1126 / science.7992043 . PMID 7992043 .
  4. ↑ Karin Edvardsson Björnberg et al .: Climate and environmental science denial: A review of the scientific literature published in 1990-2015 . In: Journal of Cleaner Production . tape 167 , 2017, p. 229-241 , doi : 10.1016 / j.jclepro.2017.08.066 .
  5. ↑ P Galéa and JC Chermann: HIV as the cause of AIDS and associated diseases . In: Genetica . 104, No. 2, 1998, pp. 133-142. doi : 10.1023 / A: 1003432603348 . PMID 10220906 .
  6. ^ The Evidence That HIV Causes AIDS . National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) - National Institutes of Health , last updated January 14, 2010.
  7. ↑ a b The Durban Declaration . In: Nature . 406, No. 6791, 2000, pp. 15-16. PMID 10894520 .
  8. ↑ Sarah Boseley: discredited doctor's 'cure' for Aids ignites life-and-death struggle in South Africa , The Guardian , 14 May 2005
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g Smith TC, Novella SP: HIV Denial in the Internet Era. Archived from the original on November 1, 2007. In: PLoS Medicine . 4, No. 8, 2007, p. E256. doi : 10.1371 / journal.pmed.0040256 . PMID 17713982 .
  10. ^ A b c N Nattrass: How bad ideas gain social traction . In: The Lancet . 380, No. 9839, July 2012, p. 332 f. doi : 10.1016 / S0140-6736 (12) 61238-0 .
  11. ↑ Seth C. Kalichman : The psychology of AIDS denialism: Pseudoscience, conspiracy thinking, and medical mistrust. In: European Psychologist . 19, No. 1, 2014, pp. 13-22. doi : 10.1027 / 1016-9040 / a000175 .
  12. ^ John S. James: AIDS Treatment Improves Survival: Answering the "AIDS Denialists" ( Memento of May 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) aids.org, accessed August 13, 2012.
  13. ↑ discredited doctor's 'cure' for Aids ignites life-and-death struggle in South Africa , The Guardian , May 14 of 2005.
  14. ^ Kiran van Rijn: The Politics of Uncertainty: The AIDS Debate, Thabo Mbeki and the South African Government Response. In: Social History of Medicine. 2006; 19 (3): 521-538. doi : 10.1093 / shm / hkl077
  15. ^ C. Bateman: Paying the price for AIDS denialism. In: S Afr Med J. 2007 Oct; 97 (10): 912-914. PMID 18000570
  16. ↑ Anti-AIDS vitamin advertising banned. Nature ( News in Brief ) 453, 969 (2008). doi : 10.1038 / 453969c
  17. ↑ P. Chigwedere, GR Seage, S. Gruskin, TH Lee, M. Essex: Estimating the Lost Benefits of Antiretroviral Drug Use in South Africa . In: Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes . 49, No. 4, December 2008, pp. 410-415. ISSN  1525-4135 . doi : 10.1097 / QAI.0b013e31818a6cd5 . PMID 19186354 . Retrieved July 2, 2012.
  18. ↑ Perspectives for Africa: Epidemic of Ignorance in Spiegel Special Geschichte , issue 2/2007 of May 22, 2007
  19. ^ G. Johnson: Bright Scientists, Dim Notions In: New York Times October 28, 2007 issue.
  20. ↑ GR Hamer: How "AIDS" diagnosis can kill. In: Raum & Zeit No. 42, October / November 1989
  21. ↑ Faith healer - Ryke Geerd Hamer: "HIV is a completely normal allergy" in Der Standard from January 14, 2010
  22. ^ AIDS: just a lucrative lie. In: Zeitenschrift No. 37, 2003
  23. ↑ Putin's Long War Against American Science . In: The New York Times , April 13, 2020. Retrieved May 8, 2020.