Views, Reviews and Interviews By MATTpAI-ueursr

Looking BackIn Anger

An esteemed professorrightly takesAIDS denialiststo task,
but his aaluable history of the movementis at times a causticread.

Connecticut and the editor-in-chief of

the journal AIDS and Behaztior.He is
also the director of the SoutheastHfV/
AIDS Research & Education Project
in Atlanta, Ga., and Cape Town, South
Africa, which affords him an up-close
view of the impacts of state-sanctioned
AIDS skepticism.As Kalichman persua-
sively makes the case, "Denialism has
ACTUpSFmarches plagued South Africa nearly as badly as
to a dangerous the diseaseitself."The country's second
drummer, denying, electedpresident,Thabo Mbeki, rejects
againstthe vast the conventional thinking toward the
preponderance diseaseand especiallythe drugs to treat
of
scientific evidencg it. Kalichman points to one biography
that HfVcauses that states,"Mbeki believesthat South
AIDS.Above:A|DS Africans who espousethe orthodox view
denialist posters. that HfV causesAIDS, including Nelson
Mandela, the labor unions, as well as
N THE rrnsr page of causal relationship berween HIV and AIDS scientists,are financially beholden
t h e p r e f a c e t o h i s AIDS, and oppose the drugs used to to drug companies."Today, Kalichman
book, Denying AIDS: treat it - form such a small, but his- notes, an estimated 800 people die of
Conspiracy Theories, torically crucial, part of the tragic AIDS each day in South Africa, while
P s e u d o s c i e n c e .a n d tale of the disease,it's inevitable that another 1,000 contract HfV.
Human Tiagedy, Seth Kalichman de- someonewho has personally engaged But it is the history of AIDS in the
scribeshis initial encounter with an aca- with the movement would have to tell United States that composes much
demic colleaguewho had written a\$7eb- the story. At times the caustic tone of of the story of the "denialism" move-
published screed against the "AIDS Denying AIDS, understandable as it ment. This terminology is of course in-
m5rth.""I mean I was really angryr" he may be, obscuresthe cold, hard facts credibly loaded, as Kalichman admits:
writes, with a senseof frustrated dismay of the book's arguments. But there's Holocaust denialism is an explosive
that permeatesthe book. The dismay is no doubt that the supposed debate, and emotional idea, and 9/l I denial-
understandable; DerryingllDS is not still thriving on corners of the Internet ism is associatedwith a fringe Internet
merely a history of the movement skep- and well-chronicled in this book, has movement of extreme political views.
tical to widely acceptedmainstream sci- had sad and seriousconsequencesand "Stillr" Kalichman writes, "I defend
ence about the disease,but also a de- holds fascinating implications for other my use of the term becauseI believe it
tailed account of the author's personal so-called scientific debates, including best describesthe rejection ofobjective
journey, via lecture halls and message those surrounding climate change.
boards, into this world. Kalichman has a long and lauded Denying AIDS:ConspirocyTheorieg
The cadre of skeptics on the outer history of AIDS prevention work as a Pseudoscience, and Human Tragedy
fringes of academia,activism and jour- widely published author, professor of By SethKalichman
nalism - who essentiallv doubt the social psychology at the University of Copernicus Book, 525,2009

76 MILLER-McCLINE / NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2009

reality to sustain a flawed, hurtfirl, and
ultimately dangerous belief system."
In the context of AIDS, Kalichman
also applies tlte term to several aca-
demics - although nearly all who
write about the topic do not do so in
peer-reviewed journals. Henry Bauer,
for instance, is professor emeritus of
chemistry and sciencestudies and dean
emeritus of arts and sciencesat the well-
regardedVirginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University, and he claims
his research shows that HfV doesn't
causeAIDS. (He is also,as it happens,
a leading autlrority on the Loch Ness
Monster.) Peter Duesberg, who has
been on the faculty of the University
of California, Berkeley,since 1964 and
is a full professor of molecular and cell
biology, also falls into the "denialist"
category. A pioneer in research inves-
tigating the genetic bases of cancer'
Duesberg was elected to the National
Academy of Sciencesin 1986.
Around that time, however,
Duesberg also made a radical shift in
his thinking on the causes of cancer
and the role retroviruses play, rejecting
much of his previous work and even-
tually losing his National Institutes of
Health funding. Becausethe retrovirus
HIV had been identified as leading to
AIDS, Duesberg extended his ftinking.
Did HIV target and destroyT:cells, ac-
cording to the emerging and widely ac-
cepted view, or was the retrovirus mere-
ly a harmless molecular tagalong? As
Kalichman writes: "The questions he
raised about whether retroviruses can
causeAIDS were crystallized as defini-
tive statementsin subsequentarticles in
prestigious scientific journals, defining
Duesberg as the most visible dissident
AIDS scientist in the world, despite his
never actually having done any work on
HfV orAIDS."
Duesberg's highly alternative point
of view gradually gave credence to
fringe activist groups like the defunct
ACTUP San Francisco, which loudly
proclaimed the diseaseto be a "prod-
uct of government conspiracy against
the gay communityr" and just as loudly
advocated against the use of retrovi-
ral and other HfV-suppressing drugs.
And because ttre tragic story of AIDS
has also been shadowed by homopho-
bia, racism and social mores about
promiscuous sex, several religious and
conservative political leaders through-
out the early and mid-1980s adopted
skeptical stances against the emerging
sciencethat explained the disease.The
Reagan administration also infamous-
ly bungled the early response to the
epidemic. The 1984 press conference
(which Kalichman sarcastically labels
The Press Conference whenever he re-
fers to it, in an example of his approach)
to announce the discovery of the virus
that causesAIDS occurred before any
scientific journals had published ttre
research, providing skeptics with am-
munition to this day,while the adminis-
tration vowed, without any real basis,to
find a vaccine within two years.
Given the attention the diseasehas
received since, it must be curious for
some to learn that seemingly intelli-
gent people still question the connec-
tions between HIV and AIDS. After
all, the fundamental scientific con-
sensus,based on thousands of clini-
cal and laboratory studies since the
early 1980s,is that HIV causesAIDS'
and as Kalichman points out, "over
130,000 research articles accessed
from the National Library of Medicine
describe the HIV process." And when
pseudoscienceabout AIDS seepsinto
the mainstream media - 4s 'ffss *1s
case in 2006, when a HarPer'smaga-
zine article basedlargely on Duesberg's
research contained at least 50 errors
about HIV, according to Kalichman
and fellow scientists who wrote in to
complain - peer-reviewed academics
have every right to be frustrated. "In
their mindsr" he fumesr "the propaga-
tion of the HIV = AIDS myth is the
product of a government conspiracy
in cahoots with a multibillion-dollar
pharmaceuticalscam."
Indeed, Kalichman is at his best
when identifuing the loose strands that
come together to form the various con-
spiracy theories surrounding AIDS,
many of which also apply to other pseu-
dosciencemovements.Factors both so-
cial and technologicalcontribute:Thke a
dash of Internet untruths, mix in some
irrational fearsabout Big Pharma or the
government, and top it offwith growing
complacency from educators and pub-
lic healttr offrcials."Denialism is at least
partly an outgrow*r of a more general
anti-science and anti-medicine move-
mentr" he writes. "Every time there is a
recall of approved medications, as hap-
pens all too often, public trust is eroded.
Campaigns against teaching evolution
in favor of creationism' now referred to
as Intelligent Design, remain as com-
monplace today as ever. Conservative
political groups have called the peer-
review process into question, further
heightening suspicions toward science
and medicine."
Refreshingly, Kalichman also takes
his colleaguesto task for failing to com-
municate effectively with the public
and making too many unfulfilled prom-
ises,pointing out *lat AIDS pseudosci-
entists, just as in the case of climate
changer"have seizedon failed scientific
predictions in making their point that
scienceis a fraud."
It's interesting that Denying AIDS
pointedly contains severalphotographs
of the author posing with those on the
other side of the debate, including
Duesberg, to emphasize the degree to
which Kalichman has gone to under-
stand their viewpoint. But it's also
clear,from evena casualperusalofthe
"blah blah blogsr" as Kalichman hap-
pens to call them, that the small' frac-
tious communiry ofAIDS skepticssees
him squarely as the enemy and views
his attacksas decidedlypersonal.Ifhe
hasn't changed any minds, at least
Kalichman has provided a thorough
chronicle of a fascinating chapter in a
long, sad story of a terrible disease.In
doing so,he notesr"I have also tried to
avoid ad hominem attacks by focusing
more on what the denialists are saying
than who they are." And then he adds:
"But that was too diffrcult." EE
Matt Palrnquist rt a Miller-McCune
contibuting editor.
MILLER-McCLINE.COM 77