Exxon still funding climate change denial
From The Guardian
The world’s largest oil company is continuing to fund lobby groups that question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial, a new analysis shows.
Company records show that ExxonMobil handed over hundreds of thousands of pounds to such lobby groups in 2008. These include the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas, which received $75,000 (£45,500), and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, which received $50,000.
According to Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, at the London School of Economics, both the NCPA and the Heritage Foundation have published “misleading and inaccurate information about climate change.”
Refreshing bluntness from a UK political journalist
From Fraser Nelson in The Spectator
If you’re reading this, Ed (and I suspect you will be) then we have a serious point to make. Five years ago, you could lie like this on the radio and get away with it. Space is tight in newspapers, no one would devote hundreds of words and graphs – as we did – to expose a lie for what is. But the world has changed now. Blogging has brought new, hyper scrutiny. Blogs have infinite space, and people with endless energy, to expose political lying – no matter how small. Your claims can be instantly counter-checked, by anyone. If you stretch the truth, you can be exposed – by anyone. And if you plan to base a whole election campaign on a lie, as you apparently intend to do, then you’re in for a rude awakening.
Goddess wanted – must have own hair
This is quite possibly the funniest thing I’ve seen all week, and proof positive that ‘doing what feels right to you’ can sometimes be a really, really bad idea.
See also: “Am I the goddess you’re looking for?”
Tory MP claims £510 of public money for astrology software
Lib Dem Voice reports that David Tredinnick MP (Bosworth, Majority 5,139), a longtime advocate of pseudo-medicine (sorry, “complementary and alternative medicine”), claimed £510 on Parliamentary expenses for a piece of astrology software – £210 for the CD and £300 for a training course in how to use it.
Tredinnick argues that this was essential preparation for a Parliamentary debate on alt-med, and that the fees office approved it (now there’s a surprise). He is also keen to emphasise that he supports the publication of expense claims, saying that “People expect transparency and we should have recognised that some time ago.”
Interestingly, according to Theyworkforyou.com, while Tredinnick is keen to push the boundaries of science when it comes to unproven and untested quack cures, he has never cast a vote one way or the other on climate change. He did, however, manage to turn up to vote in favour of the Iraq war, and against efforts to introduce a more transparent Parliament.
Tredinnick was also one of 20 Tories among the 98 MPs who famously attempted to exempt their expense claims from scrutiny under the Freedom of Information Act.
The moment that Speaker-elect John Bercow got fooled by corporate pseudo-science
17 minutes 20 into this BBC exposé…
Spiked Online – The rohypnol of web-based news and comment
Naomi and Gimpy have written a couple of good things today about the arch-libertarians over at Spiked Online. Spiked is an odd phenomenon, founded a few years ago by a group of ex-members of the “Revolutionary Communist Party”. Despite adopting many of the trappings of the left, Spiked takes a staunchly pro-corporate/pro-authoritarian-government line on a wide range of issues, including climate change, breastfeeding, smoking, obesity, gun control, human rights in China, corruption in Africa, and international justice.
On climate change, the position seems to swing between a) the standard denialist belief that global warming is a self-hating, anti-working-class, group fantasy among lefty bourgeois enviro-scientists and b) the slightly more nuanced, if no less bewildering, line that yes, maybe something is happening to the climate, and yes, maybe scientists are predicting that millions of people will die because of it, but science alone cannot tell us whether or not this is a bad thing.
As seems pretty clear in the two articles picked apart by Naomi and Gimpy, the arguments on Spiked are often so tortured that it’s difficult to believe that the author genuinely holds to what they’re saying.
Which of course begs the question why… Contrarianism clearly seems to be a part of it. As I learned at my sisters’ expense when I was growing up, disagreeing with other people for the sake of it can be both fun and entertaining, especially when you can see that people are getting really annoyed by it – and Spiked clearly do have a talent for winding everyone up.
But while Spiked’s editor, Brendan O’ Neill, often makes light of claims that he and his outfit take ‘cash for copy’, it’s difficult to ignore the galaxy of corporates listed as associates on page 10 of the Spiked Online “Brand Manager’s pack”.These include Bloomberg, BT, Cadbury Schweppes, the PR firm Hill and Knowlton, IBM, INFORM (”INFORM is an IDFA initiative set up on behalf of UK infant formula manufacturers, namely SMA Nutrition, Cow & Gate, Milupa and Farley/Heinz…”), the International Policy Network (a corporate lobby group funded by the Exxon oil company among others), Luther Pendragon (another PR firm), the Mobile Operators Association, Orange, O2, Pfizer, and the Society of Chemical Industry.
Hill and Knowlton in particular stand out because of their unparalleled, 50-year track record in creating and disseminating pro-corporate disinformation using cutting-edge PR techniques. During the 1950s, as recounted in “Don’t Get Fooled Again”, H&K pioneered the concept of “manufactured controversy” to defend the tobacco industry, muddying the water around the link between smoking and cancer, and successfully staving off regulation, long after a clear consensus had emerged among scientists.
During the 1990s, H&K cleverly exploited the technique of “Astroturfing” – creating a fake ‘grassroots’ organisation – to set up “Citizens for a Free Kuwait”, a group covertly funded by the Kuwaiti government, to campaign for US intervention following the Iraqi invasion in 1990. H&K famously coached a 14-year-old Kuwaiti girl, “Nurse Nayirah”, before an appearance in Congress in which she claimed to have seen Iraqi soldiers looting incubators from a Kuwaiti hospital, and leaving babies “to die on the cold stone floor”. It only emerged later that Nayirah was the daughter of Kuwait’s Ambassador to the United States, and that she had never worked at the hospital. The incident she described was never substantiated – but her testimony has been credited with swinging Congressional support in favour of war at a time when opinion was still wavering.
H&K also represented the Chinese authorities after the Tiananmen Square massacre, and the Indonesian government during their notorious occupation of East Timor. In the early 1990s, an un-named H&K executive was quoted as saying that “we’d represent Satan if he paid”.
Sourcewatch report that over half of Spiked Online’s public events in recent years have been held at H&K’s London offices.
Irony levels around UK government secrecy policies now dangerously high, warn scientists…
Judge rules that judges who get sacked or reprimanded should enjoy anonymity…
From The Guardian
The government and the judiciary can continue to conceal the names of more than 170 misbehaving judges, a freedom of information tribunal has ruled.
The judge heading the tribunal decided that some members of the judiciary who have been sacked or reprimanded for misconduct would suffer “great distress” if details of their misdemeanours were made public.
Chiropractic treatment found to be ineffective against panic and jitteriness
Following the British Chiropractic Association’s ill-advised attempt to use the UK’s notoriously dysfunctional libel laws against the writer Simon Singh, pro-science campaigners have been taking a close look at the online claims made by the hundreds of BCA members listed by the organisation on its website.
The response to what’s become known as the “quacklash” from one chiropractic group has been particularly amusing. Courtesy of Chiropracticlive and Quackometer, comes a leaked email from The McTimoney Chiropractic Association:
Date: 8 June 2009 09:12:18 BDT
Subject: FURTHER URGENT ACTION REQUIRED!
Dear Member
If you are reading this, we assume you have also read the urgent email we sent you last Friday. If you did not read it, READ IT VERY CAREFULLY NOW and – this is most important – ACT ON IT. This is not scaremongering. We judge this to be a real threat to you and your practice.
Because of what we consider to be a witch hunt against chiropractors, we are now issuing the following advice:
The target of the campaigners is now any claims for treatment that cannot be substantiated with chiropractic research. The safest thing for everyone to do is as follows.
- If you have a website, take it down NOW.
When you have done that, please let us know preferably by email or by phone. This will save our valuable time chasing you to see whether it has been done.
- REMOVE all the blue MCA patient information leaflets, or any patient information leaflets of your own that state you treat whiplash, colic or other childhood problems in your clinic or at any other site where they might be displayed with your contact details on them. DO NOT USE them until further notice. The MCA are working on an interim replacement leaflet which will be sent to you shortly.
- If you have not done so already, enter your name followed by the word ‘chiropractor’ into a search engine such as Google (e.g. Joe Bloggs chiropractor) and you will be able to ascertain what information about you is in the public domain e.g. where you might be listed using the Doctor title or where you might be linked with a website which might implicate you. We have found that even if you do not have a website yourself you may still have been linked inadvertently to a website listing you or your services.
CHECK ALL ENTRIES CAREFULLY AND IF IN DOUBT, CONTACT THE RELEVANT PROVIDER TO REMOVE YOUR INFORMATION.
CHECK OUR PREVIOUS EMAILS FOR SPECIFIC ADVICE AND KEY WORDS TO AVOID.
KEEP A LOG OF YOUR ACTIONS.
- If you use business cards or other stationery using the ‘doctor’ title and it does not clearly state that you are a doctor of chiropractic or that you are not a registered medical practitioner, STOP USING THEM immediately.
5. Be wary of ‘mystery shopper’ phone calls and ‘drop ins’ to your practice, especially if they start asking about your care of children, or whiplash, or your evidence base for practice.
IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW THIS ADVICE, YOU MAY BE AT RISK FROM PROSECUTION.
IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW THIS ADVICE, THE MCA MAY NOT BE ABLE TO ASSIST YOU WITH ANY PROCEEDINGS.
Although this advice may seem extreme or alarmist, its purpose is to protect you. The campaigners have a target of making a complaint against every chiropractor in the UK who they perceive to be in breach of the GCC’s CoP, the Advertising Standards Code and/or Trading Standards. We have discovered that complaints against more than 500 individual chiropractors have been sent to the GCC in the last 24 hours.
Whatever you do, do not ignore this email and make yourself one of the victims. Some of our members have not followed our earlier advice and now have complaints made against them. We do not want that to happen to you.
Even if you do not have a website, you are still at risk. Our latest information suggests that this group are now going through Yellow Pages entries. Be in no doubt, their intention is to scrutinise every single chiropractor in the UK…
When techies attack! Chiroquacks feel the heat after BCA’s attempt to stifle freedom of speech
With the BCA attempting to stifle debate over the bogus* claims made by Simon Singh, I was determined to do something.
Tory poster-boy Dan Hannan MEP voted to cover-up Europarliament expenses scandal
Tory MEP Dan Hannan (representing Southeast England) has become something of a media poster-boy for honest government in recent months. So it was a surprise to discover that he was among the 47 British MEPs who voted, earlier this year, to cover up details of MEPs expense claims.
The “Open Europe” rankings listed here take a bit of explaining, but the basic idea is that MEPs get 3 points for each pro-transparency vote they cast in the Parliament, and zero for any effort to obstruct reform.
Column I refers to the March 2009 vote to exempt from public information requests any documents relating to how much MEPs are claiming in expenses, and what they are claiming for. “Open Europe” gives Hannan a zero score for that vote, indicating that he supported the cover-up.
It seems that Hannan can talk the talk on transparency and accountability, but his voting record tells a rather different story.
London’s sleaze-tainted Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat MEPs
NB – post updated – the Open Europe rankings in fact identify the MEPs who voted in 2009 to keep expense details secret, as distinct from those who voted to cover up the results of an internal inquiry in 2008.
London is represented in the European Parliament by 9 MEPs – 3 Labour, 3 Conservative, 1 Liberal Democrat, 1 Green and 1 UK Independence Party.
Of these, only the Green Party (Jean Lambert) and UKIP (Gerard Batten) voted earlier this year against moves to keep MEPs expenses secret.
Conservative MEPs Charles Tannock and John Bowis voted in favour of the cover-up. Syed Kamall failed to turn up for the vote.
Labour MEPs Mary Honeyball, Robert Evans and Claude Moraes also all voted to cover up the expense details.
Liberal Democrat MEP Baroness Sarah Ludford was one of only two Lib Dem MEPs who voted to cover up the expenses. Interestingly, the only other Lib Dem MEP who did so, Emma Nicholson (who represents SE England), is, like Ludford, also a member of the UK’s scandal-stricken second chamber, the House of Lords. Other Liberal Democrats had spoken out strongly against the move.
It appears that only 2 of the 9 MEPs on the London list – Jean Lambert (Green) and Gerrard Batten (UKIP) – believe that the public has a right to know about the financial abuses being committed by their fellow politicians.
More details of the voting record of MEPs across the European Union can be found at the website of the Open Europe campaign.
Is your MEP among the 47 who voted to keep their expense claims secret?
*You can get the full list of your local MEPs by entering your postcode at www.writethem.com*
The website “Open Europe” has done an excellent league table of MEP’s voting record on accountability and transparency ahead of tomorrow’s election. The list shows clearly that it is not just in the UK Parliament that elected representatives have been working hard to cover up their exorbitant expense claims. If anything, the situation appears to be even worse in the European Parliament, where the MEPs’ useage of public money has been a closely-guarded secret.
The following list, extrapolated from the “Open Europe” league table, identifies the UK MEPs who voted to cover up their expense claims.
| Mr Sajjad | Karim MEP | Conservative Party |
|
| Mr Richard | Ashworth MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Struan | Stevenson MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Malcolm | Harbour MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Chris | Heaton-Harris MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Charles | Tannock MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Philip | Bushill-Matthews MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Martin | Callanan MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Neil | Parish MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Timothy | Kirkhope MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr John | Purvis MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Philip | Bradbourn MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr John | Bowis MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Daniel | Hannan MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Robert | Sturdy MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr James | Elles MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Christopher | Beazley MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Sir Robert | Atkins MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Dr Caroline | Jackson MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Densmore | Dover MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Nirj | Deva MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Giles | Chichester MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Jonathan | Evans MEP | Conservative Party | |
| Mr Jim | Allister MEP QC | Independent | |
| Mr Tom | Wise MEP | Independent | |
| Mr Robert | Kilroy-Silk MEP | Independent (elected as UK Independence Party; resigned party whip October 2004) | |
| Ms Glenis | Willmott MEP | Labour Party | |
| Mrs Catherine | Stihler MEP | Labour Party | |
| Ms Neena | Gill MEP | Labour Party | |
| Mr David | Martin MEP | Labour Party | |
| Ms Mary | Honeyball MEP | Labour Party | |
| Mr Robert | Evans MEP | Labour Party | |
| Mr Gary | Titley MEP | Labour Party | |
| Mr Claude | Moraes MEP | Labour Party | |
| Mr Richard | Howitt MEP | Labour Party | |
| Mr Stephen | Hughes MEP | Labour Party | |
| Mr Brian | Simpson MEP | Labour Party | |
| Mr Glyn | Ford MEP | Labour Party | |
| Mr Richard | Corbett MEP | Labour Party | |
| Ms Eluned | Morgan MEP | Labour Party | |
| Mr Peter | Skinner MEP | Labour Party | |
| Mr Michael | Cashman MEP | Labour Party | |
| The Baroness | Ludford MEP | Liberal Democrats | |
| The Baroness | Nicholson of Winterbourne MEP | Liberal Democrats | |
| Ms Baibre | de Brún MEP MLA | Sinn Fein |
|
| Mr Roger | Knapman MEP | UK Independence Party | |
| Mr James | Nicholson MEP | Ulster Unionist Party | |
Telegraph resumes its role as Britain’s leading pseudo-science journal…
From The Daily Telegraph:
What is it? Magic? Witchcraft? A load of twaddle? No, it’s radionics, the largely unexplained art of healing someone you’ve never met, who is hundreds, even thousands of miles away.
There are only 80 or so practitioners of radionics in Britain and Rebecka Blenntoft is one of them. She’s also the secretary of the UK Radionic Association and, like her colleagues, she gets to the root of her patients’ problems by holding a pendulum over their hair sample (or “witness”, as it’s called), and seeing what happens…
You don’t believe it? Neither did Blenntoft, until she saw the effect a radionic diagnosis had on a dog in her local village (the treatment can be used not just on humans, but on animals and even crops and soil).
“This dog was in a terrible state, itching and scratching its skin red raw,” she recalls. “A radionics practitioner discovered it was allergic to everything that came out of cows. And within a few days the dog was fine and running around.”
Nick Cohen on the Simon Singh Chiroquack libel farce…
From The Observer:
This week, Simon Singh, one of Britain’s best science writers, will decide whether to carry on playing a devilish version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? He has already lost £100,000 defending his right to speak frankly. He could walk away. No one would think the worse of him if he did. Or he could go on and risk losing the full million by ensnaring himself in the rapacious world of an English judiciary that seems ever eager to bow to the demands of Saudi oil billionaires, Russian oligarchs and the friends of Saddam Hussein to censor critics and punish them with staggering damages and legal fees…
Reputable medical authorities could test the evidence and decide whether the treatments work or not. Instead of arguing before the court of informed opinion, however, the BCA went to the libel courts and secured a ruling from Mr Justice Eady that made Singh’s desire to test chiropractors’ claims next to impossible. Because Singh used the word “bogus”, the judge said he had to prove that chiropractors knew they were worthless but “dishonestly presented them to a trusting and, in some respects perhaps, vulnerable public”.
The learned judge did not seem to understand that the worst thing about the deluded is that they sincerely believe every word they say. On Eady’s logic, a writer who condemns as “bogus” a neo-Nazi’s claim that a conspiracy of Jews controls American foreign policy could be sued successfully if lawyers jumped up and said neo-Nazis sincerely believed their conspiracy theories to be true.
Over-used expressions part I – “Paradigm shift”…
A brief jaunt through Google News reveals over 500 “paradigm shifts” in the last three weeks, including:
“A Paradigm shift in Polymer material”, from ‘Materials Views’
A “Paradigm Shift in European Cash Clearing”, from Gerson Lehrman Group
Pakistan needing a “paradigm shift” to beat the Taliban, from the BBC
A “paradigm shift in how South Koreans view North Korea”, from the New York Times
… and Malaysia’s Social Security Organisation (SOCSO) simultaneously “working towards”, and “undergoing”, a major paradigm shift, from Bernama.com
Andrew Armour reviews “Don’t Get Fooled Again”
Andrew Armour’s very generous review picks up on some of the arguments I make in “Don’t Get Fooled Again” about marketing rhetoric – and in particular the seemingly ubiquitous idea that one new product or another constitutes a “new paradigm”. Armour has a professional marketing background, and witnessed first-hand the “dot com bubble” around the turn of the century:
From Andrew Armour’s Blog
I worked in e-commerce (print management and e-tail)… and remember well the presentations explaining how all retail was going to change, every shopping mall was going to die and banks would become mobile phone companies. I’m surprised we were not told that hover cars were to take us to the centre of the earth and the Mars colony would be open by 2012. Boo.com was going to be the biggest clothing retailer in the Universe, even though nobody really wanted to buy clothes on-line and it was making no money. The ‘old-rules’ did not apply. Marketing forces? Propositions? Mechanics? So, so passe. The smartest lesson I learned from all of this was that channels evolved and very seldom disappeared because alternatives come along. Radio and cinema did not replace theatre. TV did not replace movies and digital music will not replace the live concert. Printed media is the latest to be told it is going to die but I would bet that whilst it will evolve and change it will not go away. Then – Friends Reunited was going to change everything. Then Facebook. Then Twitter. And to be fair, maybe social media channels will change a lot, they will have a place in the mix and will evolve as another tool in the marketing box but let us not avoid critical thinking when listening to the high priests telling us social media will dominate the future…
Wilson points out that the ‘new paradigm’ has a strong cultural base that is often hard to counteract even with logic and evidence… to resist the notion that the new is always brilliant is to appear old, doomed, obsolete and conservative. But – how many new ideas that were championed and promoted passionately as the new paradigm were complete flops? Fascism or communism anyone? Boo.com? Friends Reunited? Balancing radical ideas with rational actions is the increasing challenge of marketers and with the proliferation of marketing channels and tools, it is the decision about what to communicate, to whom and how that will remain. As Kelly famously put it; ‘ In an endless world of abundance the only thing in short supply is human attention’.
“I’ve got a very, very large house”Exclusive: Interview with Prof Seth Kalichman, author of “Denying Aids”
Professor Seth Kalichman’s excellent new book, Denying AIDS, is the most comprehensive account yet of the origins and development of a toxic ideology – AIDS denialism. In this e-interview, Seth discusses the book, and the urgent issues that it seeks to address.
RW: Why does AIDS denialism matter?
AIDS denialism matters because it kills people. I know this sounds like drama and hyperbole, but it is true. AIDS denialism creates confusion about the cause of AIDS. when people who need accurate information about HIV/AIDS are exposed to AIDS denialism they might actually believe that there is a debate among doctors and scientists about the cause of HIV when there is no such debate. AIDS denialists tell people that they should avoid HIV tests because they are invalid. In fact, HIV tests are extremely accurate and only rarely misdiagnose people with HIV. Being HIV infected and not knowing your HIV status means that you may not take measures to keep from spreading the virus. In many countries the majority of HIV infected people do not know they are infected. Huge resources are dedicated to getting people at risk for HIV tested. AIDS denialists undermine these efforts. Finally, AIDS denialism matters because it persuades people who have tested HIV positive to refuse HIV treatments. Denialists say that HIV treatments are toxic poison. In fact, HIV treatments are responsible for extending the lives and improving the health of people living with HIV/AIDS. In the US and UK, entire hospital wards that were once for AIDS patients are no longer needed. People with HIV are returning to work and living healthier lives because of treatments. AIDS deniers are trying to reverse this trend and return to days when there were no treatments.
RW: What was the inspiration for “Denying AIDS”?
I have been conducting HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment research in the US since 1989 and in South Africa since 2001. I have known for years that AIDS denialists exist, but like most people I thought that ignoring them would make them just go away. I also thought that very few people were AIDS denialists and that no one would listen to them. I suppose you could say I was denial about AIDS denialism. Like many others, I was very wrong about AIDS denialism. While working in South Africa I became aware of the devastating effects that AIDS denial was having in that country. The former President Thabo Mbeki had enlisted AIDS denialists among his advisors and bought into the idea that scientists are debating the cause of AIDS. Mbeki’s misguided AIDS policies resulted in over 330,000 senseless deaths and 35,000 babies who were needlessly infected with HIV. I was aware of the failure to offer treatment for South Africans living with HIV/AIDS and I knew that AIDS denial was to blame. In 2006 I also became aware of AIDS denialists in the US and UK. I received an email correspondence from someone I knew to be a well trained social psychologist in a teaching position at a respected university. She had written a very positive review of an old AIDS denialist book by Professor Peter Duesberg in California, the most notorious AIDS denialist. This psychologist had posted the book review at the RethinkingAIDS.com website. I was absolutely dumbfounded to learn that someone who I knew to be educated and who I believed to be intelligent had not only bought into AIDS denial but was actively propagating the myths. I started to look at the AIDS denialist literature and found it disturbing and also fascinating. I wanted to learn more about how seemingly intelligent people would come to believe absolute rubbish. So I decided to write Denying AIDS.
RW: What kinds of people become AIDS denialists, and what motivates them?
All kinds of people become AIDS denialists. Most visible are the fringe scientists because they write books and have websites. They are following in the footsteps of Peter Duesberg. Still, AIDS denialists who have academic positions do considerable harm because they create an impression of credibility. There are also rogue journalists who write about conspiracy theories and other sensational pseudo-news. AIDS denialist journalists do considerable harm because they bring AIDS denialism into the public eye. AIDS denialism also has its activists, typically people who have tested HIV positive and buy into denialism as a maladaptive coping strategy. These denialists also have credibility because they appear to be living healthy with HIV and not taking medications. There are even celebrities who support AIDS denialist activism, including the popular rock band the Foo Fighters and comedian Bill Maher. Tragically, AIDS denialist activists have infected their children and others and they themselves die of AIDS earlier than they may have if they accepted treatment. Then there is a large group of people who are prone to conspiracy theorizing, anti-government sentiments, and simply wanting to make mischief. These people are typically Internet bloggers with way too much time on their hands. Many seem not to realize the harm they are causing and most others just do not seem to care.
RW: Who are the key figures in the AIDS denial movement, and what are their ideas?
In my opinion, the key figures include the following people:
Peter Duesberg is the single most important figure in HIV/AIDS denialism because he is the only credentialed scientist who has worked with retroviruses, although not having worked with HIV, to propose that HIV does not cause AIDS. The rock star of AIDS denialism, he holds fast to his flawed ideas. What makes him unique is that he was once a respected scientist and now shows utter disrespect for science by refuting facts in the service of self-promotion.
David Rasnick is Peter Duesberg’s right hand man. Quite literally, in public Rasnick appears to be Duesberg’s personal assistant. At one time, he had a visiting scholar appointment with the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley (1996-2005), where he worked with Duesberg, although the university retracted his appointment. Rasnick is a conspiracy theorist, claiming that the US government propagates the ‘myth’ that HIV causes AIDS to allow the pharmaceutical industry. Rasnick served with Duesberg on the now infamous panel of AIDS experts and denialists convened by South African President Thabo Mbeki in 2000. In fact, Rasnick is credited, or blamed, with convincing Mbeki that there is a need for a scientific debate on the cause of AIDS. He also worked with Matthias Rath in conducting what are now ruled unlawful vitamin studies in South Africa.
Kary B. Mullis was a Nobel Laureate and is now among the who’s who of AIDS pseudoscientists. In 1994, Mullis co-authored the essay “What causes AIDS? It’s an open question” and he has appeared in several interviews in which he clearly questions whether HIV causes AIDS. Mullis said, “If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There is no such document.” Mullis is widely held as an eccentric who has shared his experiences, including his abduction by extraterrestrials.
Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, a medical physicist based at the Royal Perth Hospital published a paper in 1988 declaring that HIV had never been correctly isolated as a distinct ‘pure’ virus. Along with Valendar Turner and John Papadimitriou, this group proclaims that HIV does not even exist! Like Duesberg, they say that drugs, poverty, and HIV medications cause AIDS. They also broaden their view by claiming other sources of immune suppression can lead to AIDS, such as repeated exposure to semen among gay men, although seemingly not women. They propose that an oxidation process occurs in response to HIV/AIDS risk factors, such as drug use, malnutrition, and exposure to semen that causes immune suppression and ultimately AIDS.
Etienne de Harven retired from the University of Toronto and having been a Professor of Cell Biology at Sloan Kettering Institute New York from 1956 to 1981. de Harven isolated and conducted electron microscopic studies of the murine (mouse) friend leukemia virus. He was also a member of the 2000 South Africa’s Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel and is a recognized leader among AIDS Rethinkers. He worked as a scientist in his field from the 1950’s until he retired. He challenged the proof that HIV has been isolated, according to the standards laid down by him. de Harven has said, “Dominated by the media, by special pressure groups and by the interests of several pharmaceutical companies, the AIDS establishment efforts to control the disease lost contact with open-minded, peer-reviewed medical science since the unproven HIV/AIDS hypothesis received 100% of the research funds while all other hypotheses were ignored.”
Christine Maggiore was the founder of Alive & Well, and was perhaps the most visible and visited HIV/AIDS denialist website. She tested HIV positive and remained untreated. Her three-year-old daughter Eliza Jane Scovill died of complications of AIDS whereas second opinions state that the death was the result of an adverse reaction to antibiotics. Maggiore founded Alive & Well in 1995 and wrote What If Everything You Thought You Knew about AIDS Was Wrong? Her story was portrayed on the popular US television show “Law & Order SVU” in October 2008. Christine Maggiore died of AIDS just a couple months later in December 2008. She is no longer with us, but her harmful legacy lives on.
Celia Farber is a journalist who has chronicled the Peter Duesberg phenomenon since the late 1980s. She has a personal relationship with Bob Guccione the founder of Penthouse Magazine and owner of Penthouse Media Group, Inc. affording Farber considerable access to the publishing world. In 1987, Farber began writing and editing a monthly investigative feature column “Words from the Front” in SPIN Magazine, owned by Guccione. She has been featured in Discover Magazine, also owned by Guccione. These articles focused on the critiques of HIV/AIDS science. In 2006 she published an article “Out of control: AIDS and the corruption of medical science” in Harper’s magazine which stirred interest as the article represented a breakthrough of HIV/AIDS denialism into mainstream media. The article is also a chapter in her book, Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS, a collection of her magazine articles, mostly from the 1980s and 1990s. Farber has taken Duesberg on as a cause and in so doing has engaged in several rather nasty exchanges with AIDS scientists, most notably Robert Gallo. Along with Duesberg, Farber received a 2008 Clean Hands Award from the Semmelweis Society for her speaking out about the truth in AIDS. She has most recently filed a libel lawsuit against an HIV treatment advocacy group in New York City.
RW: Some people say that AIDS denial is a fringe ideology, that only affects a tiny group of people. What would you say to that?
I would say that it is true that AIDS denialism is a fringe ideology and that a fairly small group of people are actively involved in propagating AIDS denial. However, there is considerable evidence that that significant numbers of people are affected by AIDS denial. We know that in the US over 40% of Gay men question whether HIV is the cause of AIDS. We know that a majority of people who should be tested for HIV refuse. We know that people turn to the Internet for AIDS information and find AIDS denialism on numerous websites. We know that people are vulnerable to confusing information, especially when it is something that anyone would want to hear, such as HIV is not the cause of AIDS. There is no telling how many people have been harmed by AIDS denialism or how many listen to them. Whether it be thousands or hundreds of thousands who listen to AIDS denialists, we know from the South African experience that if just one person with power to make decisions listens the results can be devastating.
RW: In “Denying AIDS” you make comparisons between AIDS denial and other fringe ideologies – could you tell us a bit more about that?
The similarities between AIDS denialism and cancer denialism, Holocaust Denial, 9/11 Truth Seeking, and Global Warming Denial are striking. All of these groups use the same tactics to create the impression that experts disagree and that the historical record is in dispute. They all use selective information taken out of context that supports their viewpoint. They ignore facts and propel myths. They include pseudo-experts. They rely on conspiracy theories to gain attention. They are persuasive in their rhetoric. They use books to circumvent peer-review, they create their own periodicals, and they produce documentary looking films. They also effectively use the Internet and have manipulated their way into mainstream media. In some cases, they are even the same people! I believe that there is a denialism prone personality that I discuss in Denying AIDS. People who approach the world from a suspicious stance, are anti-establishment, and somewhat grandiose are among those who are prone to denialism.
RW: What is the relationship between AIDS denial and alternative medicine?
Not all AIDS denialists sell alternative treatments, but some do. However, all AIDS denialists pave the path for fraudulent cures and snake oil treatments. AIDS denialist say that HIV does not cause AIDS, leaving open the question of what should be done to treat AIDS? Among the most notorious AIDS denialists are those who sell remedies, such as Matthias Rath and Gary Null who sell vitamins and nutritional supplements they have proclaimed treat HIV/AIDS. Ben Goldacre has written about Matthias Rath’s destructive profiteering in his book Bad Science. AIDS denialists have on occasion worked closely with these vitamin entrepreneurs, as was the case when American David Rasnick and South African Anthony Brink teamed up with Matthias Rath. Of course, many people make well informed decisions and choose to complementary treatments such as nutritional supplements and vitamins as part of their HIV-related health care. Indeed, people may even make informed decisions to forego anti-HIV mediations. I believe we should respect these decisions when they are well-informed. HIV treatments are not for everyone. The problem we have with AIDS denialism is that it misinforms people and steers them away from HIV treatments. People are therefore being deceived by denialism to make misinformed decisions, and that of course is not okay.
RW: What did you come across in the course of your research that especially surprised you?
It surprised me that the AIDS denialists truly believe what they are saying. I had thought that they must be blatant liars and scam artists. Perhaps some are. But I have come to realize that most AIDS denialists really believe that HIV does not cause AIDS. They tend to be paranoid and their suspicious cognitive style bends facts to fit their preconceived notions. I will never forget when Peter Duesberg looked me dead in the eyes and said “You know, there is no vaccine for this; it is not an infectious disease.” I have no question that he believes what he says, as mad as it is.
Seth C. Kalichman is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Connecticut, and the Editor of the journal AIDS and Behavior. His new book is “Denying AIDS: Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, and Human Tragedy”; royalties are donated to buy HIV meds in Africa. http://denyingaids.blogspot.com
