AIDS Denialism 2009: A Year in Review

The first year of my Author’s Blog is winding down, and what a year it has been. The year started and ended with the recent death of AIDS Denialist Christine Maggiore. Despite her having tested HIV positive and dying from pneumonia and disseminated herpes - two AIDS defining conditions, Maggiore was proclaimed by denialists to have died from everything but AIDS – from coffee enemas gone wrong to the stress caused by TV show Law and Order SVU. Ultimately, AIDS denialists placed their own Christine Maggiore ‘autopsy’ report online. The report was delivered by none other than Mohammed Ali Al-Bayati, who concludes that Maggiore died of the same cause that he determined killed her daughter – antibiotic poisoning. Denialists never cease to amaze.


The spring saw the release of the AIDS denialist crockumentary film ‘House of Numbers’. This breakthrough film was supposed to be the end of AIDS as we know it. While House of Numbers made its way into local film festivals, cancellations mounted as festival organizers caught on. The New York Times summed up House of Numbers best…

Couched as a “personal journey” through the history of H.I.V. and AIDS, “House of Numbers” is actually a weaselly support pamphlet for AIDS denialists. Trafficking in irresponsible inferences and unsupported conclusions, the filmmaker Brent Leung offers himself as suave docent through a globe-trotting pseudo-investigation that should raise the hackles of anyone with even a glancing knowledge of the basic rules of reasoning.

Assembled from interview fragments with doctors, scientists, journalists and others, the film cobbles together an insinuating argument against the existence of H.I.V. as a virus and AIDS as the resulting disease. Among the many inflammatory claims is that diagnosis is a pharmaceutical-industry ruse to sell complex drug therapies (which the film then presents as the real cause of the syndrome we identify as AIDS). Evidence to support this and other highly dangerous contentions is found not in verifiable statistics (house of numbers, my foot) but in the impassioned anecdotes of individuals who have outlived the expectations of an H.I.V.-positive diagnosis.

Rife with fuzzy logic (most people with AIDS live in poverty, therefore poverty causes AIDS) and a relentless fudging of the difference between necessary and sufficient conditions, this willfully ignorant film portrays minor areas of scientific disagreement as “a research community in disarray” and diagnostic testing as a waste of time. A few months ago 18 angry doctors and scientists interviewed in the film issued a statement claiming that Mr. Leung “acted deceitfully and unethically” when recruiting them and that his film “perpetuates pseudoscience and myths.”

Mr. Leung said in a recent interview, “All we do is raise questions.” Perhaps his next film will question the existence of gravity.

The Rethinking AIDS Society stepped up its campaign against AIDS charities in 2009. Most remarkable was their launch of a sticker assault on companies that sell Product (RED) to raise money for the Global Fund against HIV/AIDS. The stickers have been seen everywhere from the Rethinking AIDS website to, well, the Rethinking AIDS website.

This year saw the triumph of Good over Evil when Matthias Rath lost his law suite against British revealer of ‘Bad Science’ Ben Goldacre. It was a celebration for all when Goldacre released his previously unpublished Bad Science chapter on AIDS free online as well as in a new edition of Bad Science.

Celia Farber announced a libel complaint against a New York AIDS charity in 2009. Although court papers seem to have been filed, it would appear that the complaint was a false start.

Shortly after, Farber announced her retirement from the ‘AIDS Dissidence’ movement. Since retiring Farber has started a new AIDS denialist website and has written a few online pieces. Who knows what mischief we’ll see from Farber in her second year of retirement.

This was also the year that AIDS Denialists descended on Oakland California for the Rethinking AIDS Conference. My personal favorite highlights were the convergences of paranoia that culminated in ‘legal strategy’ sessions. We also saw David Rasnick go nearly completely psychotic in announcing that he tells people ‘not to get tested for HIV, and if they do get tested and test positive to fergit about it. If they can’t fergit about it then they should just keep taking the test until it comes back negative’. It is this kind of advice that will probably land Rasnick in prison. At least there is always hope in a new year.

2009 was the year that multiple studies converged to show that South Africa’s AIDS Denialist policies led to more than 350,000 deaths and 35,000 babies senselessly infected with HIV. Duesberg and Rasnick pushed back with a written response to one article published by Harvard researchers. The Duesberg response was rejected by a legitimate peer reviewed journal only to be accepted by the non-peer reviewed journal Medical Hypotheses. Ultimately, the paper was retracted even from Medical Hypotheses. The same journal, Medical Hypotheses, also retracted another AIDS denialist article by Marco Ruggiero. The Ruggiero retraction drew less attention than did Duesberg’s article but was no less important.

This year saw the start of undoing the harm of AIDS Denialism in South Africa. The new President Jacob Zuma appointed a credible Minister of Health, started cleaning house of the remnants of denialism, and set forth a new and well resourced policy to prevent and treat HIV infection. After nearly two decades of neglect, AIDS policy in South Africa appears to finally be on track.

Infighting among AIDS Deniers escalated in 2009. We saw more than the usual contest of crazies between the Perthians who claim HIV does not exist and the Duesbergians who say that HIV exists but is harmless. One example was when South African AIDS Denialist extraordinaire Anthony Brink exposed Rethinking AIDS President David Crowe as a ‘fraud’ and called into question the legitimacy of the Rethinking AIDS Society. This segment of Brink’s attack is my personal favorite…

“Mr. Crowe likes the feeling of being the king; it's almost as nice as the feeling one gets from being the president of a Rotary Club in a little town in the middle of nowhere that no one wants to go to.

Sorry, I should have said President, President with a capital P, because Mr Crowe always announces himself with a capital P.

He realizes that to deal with the underlying problems caused by his witchdoctor whose views about tokoloshes he promotes, even though deep inside he knows that they're lies, and the problems he causes us by the way he runs things in doing everything possible to prevent a proper ventilation of these lies, would mean the end of his reign as king with the crown he put on his own head, or asked a couple of his friends to put on his head. And he'd have to give up being the king, the king he likes being so much, either by abdicating in disgrace or being kicked out in disgrace with a hard boot up his arse for the tremendous harm he's caused our AIDS dissident movement, and remembered forever for the tremendous harm he's caused our AIDS dissident movement.”

There was a good amount of mainstream media coverage on AIDS Denialism in 2009 including articles in New Scientist Magazine, the Vue Weekly, New Humanist Magazine, Times Higher Education, and UK 'sThe Independent. Newsweek magazine ran a feature article on the continued failed career of the once promising scientist Peter Duesberg. My all time favorite Duesberg appears in this article...‘The whole dissident idea attracts a lot of crazies. And then all of a sudden, without realizing it, you've become one of them."

2009 saw an excellent symposium on AIDS Denialism and Conspiracy Theories held at Harvard University and new research showing that AIDS conspiracy theories hinder HIV treatment.

We lost some AIDS Denialists this year. Good riddance to former South African President Mbeki’s Health Minister Manto. Unfortunately her legacy of inaction and stonewalling HIV prevention and treatment in South Africa is still being felt.

Far sadder was the loss of Lambros Papantoniou who was convinced by AIDS denialists to stop his HIV treatment.

Jerry Colinard, a board member of San Diego HEAL, died on July 4, 2009, at the age of 55, of AIDS. His webpage recalls that “Jerry supported the HIV community and was honored by a San Diego agency, ‘Being Alive,’ for his commitment. However by 2001 he had rejected traditional Western drug centered HIV medicine. He referred to himself as an ‘AIDS dissident’ thereafter.”

Sandi Lenfestey, a member of HEAL San Diego, died on January 11, 2009. She was 47, and had two children. To understand the real cost of denialism, see her young son’s shattering message to his mother.

Boyd Graves died in 2009. He was an HIV-positive lawyer who promoted the false view that HIV was developed by the US National Cancer Institute as part of a military program to develop biological warfare agents for use against targeted communities. It would seem that Mr. Graves was also an early influence on Brent Leung, the maker of AIDS Denialist film House of Numbers.

No doubt that we are in for another year of antics from AIDS denialists. There is no telling what they will do next, but I am sure it will be interesting.

Harvard Denialism, Mistrust, and Stigma Symposium

  
Hosted by Dr. Laura Bogart, Harvard Center for AIDS Research

On October 19, 2009 Harvard University hosted a day long symposium on AIDS Denialism and Conspiracy Theories. Presentations featured new research and social analysis with excellent commentaries and questions.

I had the opportunity to present along side Nicoli Nattrass from the University of Cape Town South Africa. Nicoli is one of the great anti-denialist researchers and activists. The Symposium also featured Pride Chigwedere from Harvard University who provided additional insights into the devastating effects of AIDS denialism in South Africa. Nicoli and Pride presented compelling research that shows how hundreds of thousands of South Africans needlessly died from the AIDS denialist policies during the Mbeki/Manto/Duesberg era.

In addition to AIDS denialism, the Symposium featured the latest research on AIDS conspiracy theories. Pioneering researcher Laura Bogart organized the Symposium and she presented some of her latest research showing the harmful consequences of AIDS conspiracy theories.

Now you can watch the Symposium presentations and discussions at the Harvard Initiative for Global Health website. Listen for the uninvited and always interesting example of AIDS Denialism in action provided by John Lauritsen. See if you can pick out other frequent bloggers in the audience.

Presentation slides

Videos of all Symposium Presentations

Q&A Session featuring AIDS Denialist John Lauritsen as himself

Symposium Summary
HIV denialism is a barrier to HIV prevention and treatment at the individual, community, and policy levels, and can increase HIV stigma, homophobia, and racism. This symposium focused on misconceptions related to HIV, defined as mistrust, suspicion, and rejection of medical research (e.g., HIV does not cause AIDS, HIV was created in a government laboratory). Researchers and community speakers defined HIV denialism and conspiracies and discussed their distinct consequences for policies, individual behavior related to HIV prevention and treatment, and HIV stigma.



Symposium Overview. Drs. Kalichman, Nattrass, and Chigwedere presented data showing the implications of denialism for public policy and the public health. Drs. Nattrass, Bogart and Cunningham presented data on the links between HIV conspiracy beliefs and individuals’ prevention and treatment behaviors. Dr. Gruskin discussed effects of state-level denialist and discriminatory policies on human rights. In the community panel, members of different communities (Ms. Johnson Tuckett, Ms. Rivera, Mr. Perkins, Ms. Galloway, and Reverend Hobbs) discussed HIV denialism and stigma that they have encountered in their front-line work.

Dr. Stone summed up the days’ events and insights. Definitions: HIV Denialism and Conspiracies. Both HIV denialism and conspiracies are forms of mistrust, but they differ primarily in terms of their origins. HIV denialism consists of mistrust and suspicion of accepted, mainstream scientific research on HIV. A central denialist belief is that HIV does not cause AIDS. Denialists think that HIV research has been corrupted, for example, by drug companies, and the NIH review process. Denialism has been advanced by pseudo-academics and people in power (e.g., professors state leaders, and policymakers), and it has gained momentum through the Internet. As discussed by Drs. Kalichman and Nattrass, denialism may originate with people who have a paranoid, suspicious view of the world; such individuals attempt to spread denialist beliefs to vulnerable others who are searching for explanations for their disadvantaged situations.

HIV conspiracies are characterized by mistrust of mainstream HIV information about HIV’s origins and treatment. A central belief is that HIV was created by the government, CIA, and/or Whites as a form of genocide against disadvantaged groups in society (e.g., African Americans,the poor). Conspiracies are spread in communities, most notably among African Americans and others who are disadvantaged and vulnerable. It is thought that these kinds of beliefs are a response to years of historical and current discrimination within healthcare and society in general. The most well-known example of mistreatment in healthcare is the Tuskegee syphilis study, although everyday chronic discrimination can wear away at people over time and lead to this kind of mistrust and suspicion of the healthcare system and government. HIV denialists find ready audiences among vulnerable people who do not trust mainstream science, and who are therefore open to alternative theories about HIV.

Ideas Matter. The central theme of the symposium was that ideas matter – a phrase from Dr. Nattrass’ book Mortal Combat: AIDS Denialism and the Struggle for Antiretrovirals in South Africa. Bad ideas like HIV denialism have bad consequences – for public policy and for human behaviors. HIV denialism and conspiracies have deadly implications for HIV prevention and treatment, and can contribute to low rates of HIV testing and condom use, unwillingness to use HIV treatment, and nonadherence to HIV treatment.

Addressing Denialism and Conspiracies. Several ideas were advanced for intervention, including using respected community members to spread accurate HIV information; “normalizing” HIV in communities with higher prevalence, by discussing HIV openly and acknowledging conspiracies and the reasons for them; and providing cultural competence training for HIV providers (including education about the existence of denialism and conspiracies). Importantly, solutions must be generated by communities, and community stakeholders must be equal partners in the research process.

The End of an Error: AIDS Denialist & Former South African Health Minister 'Manto' has Died

The former South African Health Minister 'Manto' has died.

I sat behind Manto at the 2006 International AIDS Conference in Toronto. We were in the session where at least a few dozen AIDS activists, mostly from the Treatment Action Campaign, filed up on the stage leading a call for Manto to resign or be fired. I was struck by her detachment. I remember thinking that she was so unmoved by the scene she was either in another world or had simply gotten used to people hating her. My own impression was that she was not dealing from a full deck of cards. Nearly catatonic. At that moment she seemed like a sad case. A throwback to my days working on psychiatric inpatient units.

Manto will be, and should be remembered as the person who implemented Mbeki’s AIDS denialist policies. Manto may very well have been the perfect person to serve as Mbeki’s Minister of AIDS Denial. But let us not forget that these were Mbeki’s policies. Manto was certainly complacent in AIDS Denialism, but she was not the architect. Manto played a critical role in the death of over 350,000 of her people and the senseless HIV infections of 35,000 babies. She also received personal counsel from Matthias Rath and Roberto Giraldo. Her legacy is theirs.

UPDATE: New York Times Story

AP Reports
CELEAN JACOBSON, Associated Press Writer

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa's former health ministerManto Tshabalala-Msimang, who gained notoriety for her dogged promotion of lemons, garlic and olive oil to treat AIDS, has died. She was 69.

The ruling African National Congress said Tshabalala-Msimang died in a Johannesburg hospital Wednesday from complications related to a 2007 liver transplant. Media outlets said she was possibly undergoing tests for a possible second transplant when she died.


Tshabalala-Msimang's disastrous HIV policies during her nine years in office made her the most unpopular government minister in post-apartheid South Africa.

She was ridiculed locally and internationally and nicknamed "Dr. Beetroot" — another one of her suggested AIDS remedies — and "Dr. Garlic."

However, she was responsible for some advances. She improved basic services in rural areas, forced down the price of medicine, tried to stem the exodus of doctors and nursesto rich countries, and was one of the driving forces behind a global anti-tobacco treaty.

A former anti-apartheid activist, she spent nearly 30 years in exile.
"We pay homage to this gallant fighter and will forever treasure the contribution she made in the struggle for liberation and the building of our democracy," the ANC said in a statement.

Tshabalala-Msimang had a loyal defender in her close friend, former President Thabo Mbeki, partly because of his own doubts about the link between HIV and AIDS. She was replaced in 2008 after Mbeki was ousted by the ANC.

Tshabalala-Msimang and Mbeki have been blamed for not preventing over 300,000 deaths, according toHarvard University study. There have been calls by activists for them to be charged with genocide.

South Africa, a nation of about 50 million, has the world's largest number of HIV cases with some 5.7 million people infected with the virus.
The country's two subsequenthealth ministers have won praise for breaking with Tshabalala-Msimang's confrontational approach.

Reaction to Tshabalala-Msimang's death was muted and sympathetic.
"We don't wish ill on any human being even though we had a very difficult time with her as minister of health," Vuyiseka Dubula of the Treatment Action Campaign, a group she often clashed with, told the South African Press Association.

AIDS activists blamed Tshabalala-Msimang for spreading confusion aboutAIDS. They won a landmark court case against the ministry in 2002 to force it to provide pregnant women with drugs to stop them infecting their unborn child; and in 2003 to give antiretroviral therapy to people in the more advanced stages of the disease.
Tshabalala-Msimang repeatedly stressed her mistrust of antiretroviral medicine, saying too little was known about the side effects.

"All I am bombarded about is antiretrovirals, antiretrovirals," she said at a 2005 media conference. "There are other things we can be assisted in doing to respond to HIV/AIDS in this country."

Tshabalala-Msimang's recommendation was to use nutritional remedies such as olive oil, the African potato, beetroot, garlic and lemon.

"Raw garlic and a skin of the lemon — not only do they give you a beautiful face and skin but they also protect you from disease," she said.

Her views — which made her a favorite target for cartoonists — reflected mistrust in traditional African societies of "Western" remedies and earned her loyal supporters.
She shrugged off constant calls for her resignation, which reached a crescendo at the August 2006international AIDS conference in Toronto, where the South African stand featured displays of garlic and lemons.

In a devastating speech to the conference, the then-United Nations envoy for AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, slammed the government's policies as "more worthy of a lunatic fringe than of a concerned and compassionate state."

Tshabalala-Msimang continued as a cabinet minister under the caretaker presidency ofKgalema Motlanthewho replaced Mbeki. But she was not given a post after President Jacob Zuma was elected earlier this year.

However, she remained on theANC's national executive committee.

Tshabalala-Msimang was born near Durban Oct. 9, 1940. She completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at Fort Hare in 1962 — just after the African National Congress was banned — and shortly after that was ordered into exile with 27 other students who had been singled out for their leadership potential.

When she said she was leaving for exile, her mother implored: "Please do something for me if I should never see you again — become a medical doctor," according to the Department of Health.

Tshabalala-Msimang graduated from the First Leningrad Medical Institute and then went on to gain a Masters degree in Public Health from the University of Antwerp in Belgium. She worked at hospitals in Tanzania andBotswana and returned toSouth Africa as apartheid was crumbling in 1990.

She was elected to parliament at the first democratic multiparty elections in 1994, was named deputy justice minister in 1996 and health minister in June 1989.
She was married to Mendi Msimang, a former ANC treasurer, and had two daughters.

Funeral details have not yet been announced.

HIV, AIDS, and One Year Later: No Rest for Christne Maggiore

There is apparently no rest for Christine Maggiore. Exploited by AIDS Denialists throughout her bout with HIV infection, the manipulation of facts and twisting of reality continues one year after her sad death. Christine Maggiore tested HIV positive in 1992, as proven by her HIV positive test results shown in the film House of Numbers. Christine died of pneumonia and disseminated herpes (an AIDS defining condition) as shown on her Death Certificate.

Now we see an autopsy summary that includes her having another AIDS defining condition, Pneumocystis jiroveci (carinii) pneumonia (PCP) - although the actual autopsy report is unavailable and her Death Certificate shows no autopsy was conducted. Yet, the report states that Christine Maggiore did not die of AIDS. Rather, she died of antibiotic poisoning.

Coincidentally(?), we are to believe that her baby Eliza Jane Scovill also died of antibiotics despite the official report by the Los Angeles Coroner that ruled she died from complications of AIDS. At first, AIDS Denialists claimed that Christine Maggiore died from a ‘bad detox’. Then there was speculation that she died from the stress caused by the Law and Order SVU television episode that portrayed her AIDS Denial. Now it seems Law and Order is off the hook and antibiotics killed Christine.


The report of Christine Maggiore’s death is offered by Dr. Mohammed Ali Al-Bayati, who received his Bachelors of Science from the University of Baghdad, College of Veterinary Medicine in 1975. His training then took him to the University of Cairo where he completed his Masters Thesis titled “Histopathological and histochemical changes in the adrenal glands of the Egyptian Buffalo with follicular cysts and inactive ovaries.” Al-Bayati received his doctorate from the University of California Davis in Human Pathology, Toxicology, Immunology, and Biochmestry.

Al-Bayati is a consultant on adverse reactions to pharmaceuticals, including the evils of vaccines. The limited research he has published has been nearly exclusively on rats and mice. He has never conducted research on HIV or on humans. Still, he claims that HIV is harmless and that everything from crack cocaine, alkyl nitrites, malnutrition, AZT, protease inhibitors and of course antibiotics cause AIDS.

Al-Bayati is most notorious for his critique of the Los Angeles County coroner’s report for Eliza Jane Scovill, Christine Maggiore’s three-year-old daughter who died of AIDS. In one of the more obscene Internet postings in HIV/AIDS denialism, Al-Bayati has exploited the deaths of children by printing their autopsy reports in a dubious journal and posting the reports online. The obscenities continue with this new ‘report’ on Christine Maggiore’s death.

I have excerpted the first sections and the final conclusion from Mohammed Ali Al-Bayati’s report “Analysis of causes that led to Christine Maggiore’s acute renal and cardiac failure, pulmonary edema, and death” which is available at Rethinking AIDS website, where the exploitation of Christine Maggiore continues.

Analysis of causes that led to Christine Maggiore’s acute renal and cardiac failure, pulmonary edema, and death

Mohammed Ali Al-Bayati Ph.D., DABT, DABVT

Christine Maggiore was diagnosed with pneumonia on December 18, 2008 and was treated with antibiotics (Gentamicin, Rocephin, Azithromycin), Acyclovir, Fluconazole and corticosteroids. She also received Meyer’s cocktail, vitamin C, and calcium IV. She died on December 27,2008. She was 52 years of age.

Christine suffered fatal renal failure caused by antibiotics, antiviral, and calcium received during the 9 days prior to her death. The microscopic examination of the H & E stained sections of her kidneys revealed the presence of changes consistent with acute tubular necrosis. There were also changes consistent with mild nephrosclerosis.

Christine’s acute renal failure led to development of acute left ventricular heart failure, pulmonary congestion, and pulmonary edema. Christine’s pericardial sac and left chest cavity contained 100 mL and 200 mL of clear light brown serious fluid, respectively. Christine’s right and left lungs weighted 1319 and 1307 g, respectively. Her total lung weight was 2626 g, which is 750% of the average normal lung weight. The autopsy, pathology, and the clinical data and observation described in this report show clearly that Christine did not suffer from any AIDS indicator illness during the 2 years prior to her death or at the time of her death.

The gross and microscopic examination of Christine lymphoid organs and bone marrow appeared normal. The growth of P. jiroveci observed in Christine’s lungs and other tissues resulted from her treatment with corticosteroids during the 9 days prior to her death.

Dr. David M. Posey performed the autopsy in Christine’s case and his gross autopsy examination was completed on January 12, 2009. He stated that Christine was a well-developed and well-nourished Caucasian woman who appeared younger than her age of 52 years. She measured 66 inches in length and weighed 145 pounds.

Examination of Christine’s chest and abdominal cavities revealed that her organs were normally placed with no adhesions in these cavities noted. Her pericardial sac and left chest cavity contained 100 mL and 200 mL of clear light brown serous fluid, respectively.

Dr. Posey’s gross examination of Christine’s lungs revealed severe pulmonary edema and congestion. Christine’s right and left lungs weighted 1319 and 1307 g, respectively. His microscopic examinations of H & E stained sections of her lungs demonstrated severe congestion and edema. There was marked alveolar distention by frothy eosinophilic proteinaceous exudates. Diffuse alveolar damage was noted in both lungs. There was also proliferation of type 2 pneumocytes with modest infiltrates of acute and chronic inflammatory cells.

Posey’s microscopic examination of Christine’s organs revealed the following abnormalities in her kidneys, heart, liver, and thyroid gland: a) The presence of changes consistent with acute tubular necrosis in both kidneys. There were also changes consistent with mild nephrosclerosis; b) mild interstitial edema in the heart; c) benign focal nodular hyperplasia in the liver; and d) microscopic benign follicular adenoma in the thyroid gland.

In addition, growth of Pneumocystis jiroveci (carinii) was observed on the H & E stained sections of lungs, liver, pancreas, spleen, kidneys, and bone marrow and confirmed on the Gomori methenamine silver (GMS) preparation. The gross and microscopic examinations of Christine’s brain, thymus, spleen, lymph node, bone marrow, brain, and other organs were unremarkable.

Christine’s husband and his attorney requested that I evaluate the medical evidence in Christine’s case and give my opinion concerning the likely causes that led to her illness and sudden death. I am a toxicologist and pathologist with over 20 years experience in these fields. I have evaluated many cases of children and adults who died suddenly from unexplained causes and cases of children and adults who suffered from acute and/or chronic illnesses. I was able to explain the causes of illnesses and death in these cases using differential diagnosis.

I have also served as an expert witness in many medical-legal cases involving children and adults. I have published over 45 articles in medical and scientific journals.

I evaluated Christine’s medical records, autopsy report, and the pertinent articles cited in this report using differential diagnosis. My investigation in this case reveals the following: 1) Christine suffered fatal renal failure caused by the medications received during the 9 days prior to her death as indicated by the clinical and medical studies described in Section IV of this report.

For the full ‘report’ click here

Conclusions

Christine did not suffer from any AIDS indicator illness during the 2 years prior to her death and at the time of her death. It has been reported that Christine’s serum was tested positive for HIV with subsequent testing indeterminate in the 1990s. The clinical findings in Christine clearly challenge the clinical and the scientific validity of her HIV test.

Kosovska Mitrovica

 Streets of Northern Mitrovica

I really like Kosovska Mitrovica, but it's rather difficult to write about it. I spent a very nice time in the northern part of the city, and I knew it would not be enough just to show you some pictures and to write how sad that the city is one of the last devided cities in Europe and that crazy thing happened and happens there. So I tried to put some hisotrical facts together to help the understanding of the odd situation now and to put my pictures in a different angle.


The city, that is one of the oldest settlements of Kosovo and Metohija (in those times the region belonged to Raska) was named after Saint Demetrius (Dimitrie Solunski with patron day on November 8th called Mitrovdan) in the 14th century and a church dedicated to him was built.

Old postcard showing a street in Kosovska Mitrovica

Under Ottoman rule (that lasted from 1455 – 1912) the city became a lively industrial city (lead was discovered and mines were opened).

The Serb population never accepted Ottoman rule and often rose against the foreign regimen. The Albanian population didn’t resist against Ottoman rule and accepted easily the muslim religion. Kosovo was temporarily occupied by Austrian forces during the Great War of 1683–1699, but the Ottomans re-established their rule of the region. In 1766 the Ottomans abolished the Patriarchate of Pec and weakened the position of Christians by inducing a taxation of non-Muslims.

View of Mitrovica from the hill arriving from Zvecan

Changment arrived after the Congress of Berlin (1878) when Serbia and Montenegro got ist independence, Mitrovica stayed under Ottoman rule (as a region of Sandzak) but was occupied by Austrian forces. After the first Balkan War in 1913, Mitrovica was put under the Kingdom of Serbia  and after 1918 under the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs later (1929) Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

The main street in Mitrovica

Even during communist Yugoslavia there were constant ethnic tensions between Albanian and Serbs and another problem was an unclear strategy how to handle the problem. So from trying to get rid of Albanians (after 1953 Josip Broz Tito reached an agreement with Turkey to push Yugoslavian Albanians to declare themself Turks and to leave for Turkey) to giving Albanians more rights and freedom (University in Pristina was founded to assure Albanians higher education and after 1974 the Socialist Autonomes province of Kosovo received more power) everything was tried to solve the constant ethnic problems.

Inter-ethnic tensions continued to worsen in Kosovo throughout the 1980's. A high birth-rate in Albanian community and departing and diminuishing Serbian population changed the demography of the province and lead so to Milosevic’s 1989 reaction to reduce Kosovo’s special autonomy status in Serbia. Kosovo Albanians reacted with parallel structure (e.g. n medicine, education, taxations).

Of course such eternally not solved tensions could not lead to anything good. Violent Guerilla groups (KLA), armed Serbian and Yugolsavian security forces and desinteresse by the international community resulted in a ugly War with its peak in NATO bombing of 1999, leaving the province in a complete chaos and a fertile place for lies, crimes and  more tensions.

View to the Southern part of the city

An old building from communist time

Kosovska Mitrovica was so divided in a Southern half (populated completely by ethnic Alanians, ca. 60'000 inhabitants) and a Northern part (populated by  mostly Serbs, 13'000,  plus other ethnic minorities like Muslims by Nationality, Turks and Roma.

The bridge that instead of connecting is dividing the city

 

The City is since then divided by 2 bridges (and a little footbridge)  and the border is made by the river Ibar. The city and the borders are supervised by KFOR-troups.

However all that supervising was not really able to prevent clashes or attackes, and from all sides the KFOR is more seen as an intruder or occupator.

The new church for Sveti Dimitrije

The old church devoted to Saint Demetrius (from 14th century) that gave the city its name, came to lay in the Albanian part of the city.  Due to riots (the major ones in 2004) it became impossible to reach the church for orthodox believers.  As a surrogate a new church was built in 2005 on the hill over the northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica and was dedicated to Saint Demetrius.

Shrine dedicated to the Serb and Albanian partisans 

in the 1941–1945 war from 1973 by Bogdan Bogdanovic

All the idustry that made Mitrovica a good funtioning city in the past was shut down because of the war and the tensions in the area. Today there is hardly a branch of industry working. Even electricity and water is not always available, not because it would be impossible to supply, but because the political wish is not present. 
The region is in a rather dead end situation that must be curbed by investments. But I would also say for that: even if there are attempts and studies made to solve the difficult ecconomic situation, it will not work, until the political wish on all sides is ripe.

Apart from the natural division created by the Ibar, North Mitrovica itself is being further divided between a Serbian section of the city (where also other minorities live like: Roma, Ashkali, Turks) and three neighborhoods - Bosnjacka Mahala, Tri Solitera, and Suvi Do - that are largely Albanian.

I would have like to post some pictures about Bosnjacka mahala, but just by aproaching the district (a cluster of old houses with a huge Albanian flag on the roof) just because we were sitting in a Serbian car some people started shouting at us, so it was not possible to take pictures. I can just tell: a scary situation!

Contact with the city's southern half (populated by Albanians) is also rare and hostile. Before crossing the bridge into that part we had to customize the car, to hide every possible sign of serbness or orthodoxy or we would have needed escort from KFOR.

Here is one building of Naselja "Tri Solitera" (the 3 skyscraper district)  populated by Albanians and where earlier this year exploded some bombs. That's the only picture I could take from the albanian populated places.

N.B. This post is not an intention to implement that there are good ones and bad ones. I wish to show that you can not force people to get along if their basic believes are so different and if the roots of their disagreements are so settled. The situation is not created by the people itself (it's neither the Albanian population nor the Serbian). It's been heavily manipulated by imperialistic wishes of third parties, the ones that now make presure to these people to make peace, to get along nicely. The ones that dare to speak about multiethnicity in the KOSMET region. The ones that dare to say: we helped those people with the "humanitarian" mission: the NATO agression!

I would also like to mention two of very good impressions that have been recently writed about Kosovska Mitrovica:

Alessandro di Meo wrote this posts SOS Kosovo and  KOSMET-è scattato l'allarme about his recent stay in KOSMET (in italian)

Gian Matteo Apuzzo worte a lot about divided cities, and here his post about Kosovska Mitrovica. Divisi dal ponte: Mitrovica,una città die mondi (in italian)

Does Luc Montagnier Make the Case for AIDS Denialism?

If you have wondered just how manipulative and destructive AIDS Denialism can be, look no further than the ‘documentary’ House of Numbers. As I have posted before, House of Numbers uses the classic tactics of AIDS Denialism to create the illusion of a debate among scientists as to whether HIV causes AIDS.

Images can be powerful and persuasive. In the age of digital editing, anyone can snip away in their own home to create what could appear to be a credible film. Such is the case with House of Numbers.

The latest mischief focuses on four minutes of snips from an interview in House of Numbers with Nobel Prize winning discoverer of HIV, Dr. Luc Montagnier. AIDS Denialists around the world have rejoiced at those four minutes of footage. Aside from the Rethinking AIDS Society etc… the video of Dr. Montagnier has quickly taking on a life of its own with…


Libertarian bloggers…“Particularly problematical for the orthodoxy is the interview with Luc Montagnier, the French scientist who discovered HIV (if you accept that he discovered something).”

Comments on media threads…. “When Luc Montagnier states on released video on World AIDS Day, that vaccines and drugs are not necessary to get rid of HIV, this is earth-shattering news. The Rethinkers have been saying this for a very long time. How can the mainstream keep pushing their toxic drugs to society? The truth always prevails!”

Pseudoscientists.... "Luc Montagnier’s remarks were, it was alleged, (1) taken out of context; (2) suffered from Montagnier’s lack of command of English; (3) reflected trapping through leading questions from the interviewer (though Montagnier himself did not sign the letter)."

Anti-government bent groups…. “In essence, Montagnier has sided with Peter Duesberg in his hypothesis that HIV is harmless. Duesberg believes that several factors, such as the use of pharmaceutical and recreational drugs, are the true causes of AIDS and not HIV.”

AIDS Myth Exposed… “I think he double speaks ie leaves wriggle room because he knows the French will kill him (French Citizen- French law, french court) when the proverbial brown stuff goes flying vs this totally 'all in' buddy Gallo knows corporate and commercial interest will justify the means some how- jobs and billions in revenue will be his get out of jail free card.”

The problem is, unlike Kari Mullis also a Nobel Laureate, Dr. Montagnier is credible. Also unlike Mullis, Dr. Montagnier is not known to use LSD and as far I know he has never claimed to have been abducted by Alien Glowing Raccoons.

Remember, credibility counts and Dr. Montagnier is highly credible.

That is why if he came out in support of AIDS Denialist claims no one, including me, would take it lightly. If Dr. Montagnier raised doubts that HIV is a lethal sexually transmitted virus I would be the first to publically apologize for dismissing Peter Duesberg as a flake. If Dr. Montagnier stated that people in Africa who are dying of AIDS were afflicted by stress and not HIV infection, I would call for an immediate return of all copies of Denying AIDS and burn them in a public ceremony on the University of California Berkeley campus. I would also donate all of the Royalties from Denying AIDS to Henry Bauer’s expeditions in search of Nessies.

Now just hold on. It isn’t about to happen.

Here is what Dr. Montagnier says, taken from the transcript from House of Numbers where he is interviewed by Brent Leung, the guy who made the film:

Leung: You talked about oxidative stress earlier. Is treating oxidative stress one of the best ways to deal with the African AIDS epidemic?

Montagnier: I think this is one way to approach, to decrease the rate of transmission, because I believe HIV we can be exposed to HIV many times without bring chronically infected, our immune system will get rid of the virus within a few weeks, if you have a good immune system; and this is the problem also of the African people. Their nutrition is not very equilibrated, they are in oxidative stress, even if they are not infected with HIV; so their immune system doesn't work well already. So it's prone, it can, you know, allow HIV to get in and persist. So there are many ways which are not the vaccine, the magic name, the vaccine, many ways to decrease the transmission just by simple measures of nutrition, giving antioxidants -- proper antioxidants -- hygiene measures, fighting the other infections. So they are not spectacular, but they could, you know, decrease very well the epidemic, to the level they are in occidental countries, western countries.

Leung: So if you have a good immune system, then your body can naturally get rid of HIV?

Montagnier: Yes.

Leung: Oh, interesting. Do you think we should have more of a push for antioxidants, and things of that nature, in Africa than antiretrovirals (AIDS drugs)?

Montagnier: We should push for more, you know, a combination of measures; antioxidants, nutrition advice, nutritions, fighting other infections -- malaria, tuberculosis, parasitosis, worms -- education of course, genital hygiene for women and men also, very simple measures which [are] not very expensive, but which could do a lot. And this is my, actually my worry about the many spectacular action for the global funds to buy drugs and so on, and Bill Gates and so on, for the vaccine. But you know those kind of measures are not very well funded, they're not funded at all, or they are, you know, it really depends on the local government to take choice of this, but local governments they take advice of the scientific advisors from the intelligent institutions, and they don't get this kind of advice very often.

Leung: Well there's no money in nutrition, right? There's no profit.

Montagnier: There's no profit, yes. Water is important. Water is key.

Leung: Now one thing you said, you were talking about the fact that if you have a built immune system, it is possible to get rid of HIV naturally. If you take a poor African who's been infected and you build up their immune system, is it possible for them to also naturally get rid of it?

Montagnier: [Nodding yes] I would think so.

Leung: That's an important point.

Montagnier: It's important knowledge which is completely neglected. People always think of drugs and vaccine. So this is a message which may be different from what you heard before, no?

Leung: The closing?

Montagnier: No, no, yes, my message, it's different from what you heard from (Anthony) Fauci or...

Leung: Yes, it's a little different.

Montagnier: Little different.

The points excerpted in Leung’s interview are used by AIDS Denialists to suggest that Dr. Montagnier is in line with Peter Duesberg and other AIDS Deniers.

But is he?

For the record, Dr. Montagnier has stated that Duesberg is hopelessly wrong on AIDS, including in Dr. Montagnier's 2008 Nobel Lecture. Now read this section of his lecture carefully because not only does Dr. Montagnier refute the central ideas of AIDS Denialism speaking directly about Peter Duesberg himself, he discusses the complexity of AIDS and the failings of AZT mono-therapy, statements that AIDS Denialists will easily exploit. I have put key phrases in bold to help the Cherry Pickers.

“Our data, which I presented in September 1983 at a meeting on HTLV in Cold Spring Harbor,were met with scepticism, and only in the Spring of 1984 did the description of a quasi identical virus under the name of HTLV III by the group of R. C. Gallo convince the scientific community that this new retrolentivirus was the cause of AIDS. The group of Jay Levy in San Francisco also isolated the same kind of virus, followed by many other laboratories.

However, a few opponents led by P. Duesberg argued, and are still arguing, that there is no real demonstration that the virus does exist and is the cause of AIDS according to Koch_s postulates.

In fact, the proviral DNA of the virus, renamed HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) by an international nomenclature committee, was cloned and sequenced,[9–11] showing the classical gene structure of animal retroviruses which Dr. Duesberg himself helped to uncover earlier. But in addition, new genes (tat, nef), important in the regulation of the expression of the viral genetic information, were recognized from the DNA sequencing, making the viral genome probably the most complex known in the retrovirus family. HIV and its primate cousins are therefore well characterized entities only composed of DNA sequences, none existing in the human genome.

A posteriori, two facts should have provided to the few remaining sceptics final conviction that HIV is the culprit in AIDS:

1) Transmission of AIDS by blood transfusion has practically disappeared in countries where the detection of HIV antibodies in blood donors has been implemented.

2) The inhibition of virus multiplication by a combination of specific inhibitors of the viral enzymes (reverse transcriptase, protease) has greatly improved the clinical conditions of the patients. Mutations in the genome of HIV-inducing resistance to these inhibitors has led to relapses and aggravation of the patients_ condition. In 1986, thanks to a collaboration with Portuguese colleagues, we isolated a second virus (which I named HIV2) from West African patients hospitalized in a Lisbon hospital. They all had the signs of AIDS but had no
antibodies against our first virus. In fact, they had only antibodies to the most variable protein of HIV, the surface glycoprotein. The patients had lost antibodies against the well-conserved internal proteins of HIV2 which show common epitopes with their counterparts of HIV1, unlike the glycoprotein .

The isolation of HIV1 and HIV2 viruses from AIDS patients in Africa made us realize that we were dealing with a large epidemic of heterosexually transmitted viruses.

Evidence that HIV was not transmitted by casual contacts came from our study in a French boarding school, where HIV infected haemophilic children were in close contact, day and night, with HIV negative nonhaemophilic children: none of the latter were found to be HIV positive.

The isolation of the virus causing AIDS allowed to implement rational prevention measures and also to start a search for efficient viral inhibitors. The first candidate, azidothymidine (AZT), was an efficient inhibitor of HIV reverse transcriptase in in vitro experiments (Mitsuya and Broder). However, its use in AIDS patients was soon recognized as disappointing. In fact, the treatment readily induced mutants of the virus resistant to AZT and did not extend the life span of the patients. The main obstacle of treatment with a single or two inhibitors was the capacity of the virus to mutate, which also impedes the design of an efficient vaccine and also explains the complexity of the pathophysiology of AIDS.” (page 5822)

To the sane and rational thinking person, there can be no question that Dr. Montagnier does not deny that HIV causes AIDS. He does not dispute the pathology that HIV causes the immune system. He does not question HIV testing or the effectiveness of combination antiretroviral medications. Amazingly, in his Nobel lecture Dr. Montagnier directly dismisses Duesberg and AIDS Denialism.

There is also no basis to believe that Dr. Montagnier agrees with Duesberg that there is no genetic link to ANY cancer and that ALL cancers are caused by toxins, or with Mullis that aliens abduct scientists, or Bauer that Loch Ness Monsters exist, or Rasnick that the CIA is working with Big Pharama to sell AZT, or Matthias Rath that Bill Gates is monitoring our conversations, or Andrew Maniotis that AIDS is caused by Syphilis, or the Perth Group that excessive exposure semen causes AIDS, or Celia Farber with whatever the hell it is that she is saying.

There is no basis for saying that Dr. Montagnier agrees with any of these things.

But that wont stop some from saying that he does.

Killer syndrome: The Aids denialists

Why does a small band of scientists and campaigners persist in denying the link between HIV and Aids, when the evidence that they are wrong is overwhelming?
by Rob Sharp, The Independent, London, December 1, 2009

A middle-aged man walks into an East London café and apologises for being late. With his clipped hair and bus-driver's uniform of thick overcoat, shirt, and branded tie, he looks like any other public service employee. But soon he delivers a speech of startling ferocity against the medical establishment.

Mike explains that he runs a London-based health website on which he posts articles and links to information that questions whether HIV causes Aids, disputes the existence of HIV, and denies the fact that unprotected sex helps to spread it. He offers support for those who, he says, are "negotiating with medical authorities over taking a different approach to dealing with their circumstances." He claims to get thousands of hits on his site and has helped advise several people who have been diagnosed with HIV and are launching legal action against their local health authorities, in the belief that they have been unfairly treated by the doctors who are trying to help them.

Mike is an Aids denialist. He shares the view of a global network of academics and campaigners that follow the proclamations of Peter Duesberg, a cell biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who believes HIV does not cause Aids. And, alarmingly, 2009 has been a good year for the denialist community.


In the first week of November, a record number of Aids denialists from 28 countries, including Britain, attended the Rethinking Aids conference in Oakland, California. One of the main draws of the conference was a screening of a controversial new documentary by Canadian-born director Brent Leung, House of Numbers, which gives a platform to denialist theories.

Over the last two months it has been screened at the Cambridge and Raindance Film Festivals – decisions that provoked a storm of criticism online. The Spectator was forced to cancel a debate and screening of the film on 28 October after some of the participating speakers pulled out. And yet despite widespread outrage, the film has undoubtedly encouraged those who espouse denialist theories in the UK.

So who are the Aids deniers and what do they believe? According to Seth Kalichman, a psychologist at the University of Connecticut, whose exposé of the movement, Denying Aids, was published in March, denialists anywhere in the world generally share several common beliefs. They say that the "myth" that HIV causes Aids is the product of conspiracies between governments and the pharmaceutical industry; that antiretroviral medication is toxic; and that one day the orthodox medical theories on HIV will crumble.

So far, so typically crackpot. But the movement has gained some damaging traction – and the propagation of denialist theories can have deadly repercussions. Aids charities warn that reading material which argues that HIV does not cause Aids can dissuade potential sufferers from getting tested for HIV, and even lead HIV-infected people to ignore HIV-positive results and cause them to reject antiretroviral therapies.

"Denying the link between HIV and Aids is scientific illiteracy," says Yusef Azad, director of policy and campaigns at the National Aids Trust, Britain's leading HIV/Aids charity. "But worse than that, it is profoundly dangerous and has caused countless unnecessary deaths. Just because something is on the internet does not mean it is even remotely true. More than two decades of peer-reviewed scientific research demonstrates in some detail how HIV attacks the immune system and causes Aids if left untreated."

***

Today is World Aids Day, an annual event designed to raise awareness of the problems facing the 33.2 million people around the world who live with the disease. The initiative's British website outlines one of its aims: to "present true, sometimes surprising, accounts of how HIV affects people in the UK, and to dispel myths and misinformation."

The Joint United Nations programme on HIV/Aids and the World Health Organisation declared last week that the HIV/Aids pandemic was on a downward trend for the first time; in part due to the use of effective anti-retroviral treatment. With the evidence on orthodox approaches to HIV being so overwhelmingly convincing, why do some insist on spreading health advice that could put other people's lives at risk? And who believes them? The answer lies in some scientifically discredited research that was publicly aired almost 30 years ago, but still drives a disparate network of supporters.

According to international Aids charity Avert, Aids science began in the 1980s, when some scientists linked an outbreak in opportunistic infections – those diseases which take advantage of a lowered immune system – with people's lifestyle choices. In December 1981 a research paper was published in The New England Journal of Medicine which reported the first cases of PCP (pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a rare condition, later discovered to be Aids-defining) among intravenous drug users.

In February 1982 a group of scientists published a paper in The Lancet that put the opportunistic infections down to the use of the stimulant amyl nitrate, or "poppers" among the gay community (a letter in The Lancet in 1981 went as far as to call the problem "gay compromise syndrome"). Soon, however, research indicated that the disease occurred in other population groups. In July 1982, scientists published research on PCP found in people with haemophilia. Fast-forward to 23 April 1984, when the US health and human services secretary, Margaret Heckler, announced that US biomedical researcher Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute had isolated the virus which caused Aids. But not all scientists agreed this virus was to blame. It subsequently turned out that Gallo's virus, which he then called HTLV-III, was in fact the same virus discovered a year earlier by Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, which he had called LAV.

Peter Duesberg, a Californian cancer researcher who had mapped the genetic make-up of a virus similar to HIV, disputed the predominant theory that a virus was causing Aids. He believed a single virus could not disable someone's immune system and in 1987 wrote a paper for the medical journal Cancer Research that clung to the discredited idea that Aids was caused by long-term consumption of recreational and antiretroviral drugs. He claimed HIV was a "passenger" virus, a harmless type of virus sometimes found in diseased tissue. While at the time, there were others who disputed the orthodox HIV hypothesis, most have since changed their minds as the evidence became overwhelming. Indeed, the sheer quantity of research supporting the HIV/Aids hypothesis is impressive. To cite just one piece of evidence: in 1993, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia reviewed 230,179 cases of people with an "Aids-like illness". Only 47 people tested HIV-negative, or less than 0.025 per cent.

The Independent found itself at the forefront of the fightback against denialist theories. In May 1992, three Nobel laureates wrote to Steve Connor, this newspaper's science editor, praising his reporting on the issue. Signed by former president of the Royal Society Aaron Klug, the biochemist Cesar Milstein and the molecular biologist Max Perutz, the letter states: "There is no question in our minds – as in the great majority of scientists who have acquainted themselves with the facts – that HIV is the cause of Aids."

But Duesberg – now an outcast to mainstream medical science – continues to push his ideas, winning credence among those who are, for their own reasons, unwilling to accept the truth. Prominent present-day denialists include Henry Bauer, a retired chemistry and life sciences professor at Virginia State University and Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, a medical biophysicist working at Royal Perth Hospital, at the University of Western Australia. All three have a strong following online. Duesberg's website gets 15,000 hits a month, and has links to articles like "Duesberg Defends Challenges to the Existence of HIV".

The influence of such literature should not be underestimated. "Internet postings suggest thousands of people at least question the science behind HIV as the cause of Aids," warns Seth Kalichman. "In 2007 there were 'Aids dissident' science conferences held in Paris and Berlin. An online Aids dissident encyclopaedia-style website, Aids Wiki, boasts over 70,000 visits. The proliferation of denialist writings through multiple media outlets does more than distract Aids scientists; it undermines countless efforts to save lives."

***

One only needs to look to South Africa to see the lethal consequences of denialism. The former South African president, Thabo Mbeki, discovered the movement and in 2000 he assembled a "Presidential Aids Advisory Panel" of 30 people, half of whom were denialists, including Duesberg and Papadopulos- Eleopulos. In 2000, Mbeki's opening remarks to the panel included the words: "There is an approach that asks why this President of South Africa is trying to give legitimacy to discredited scientists, because, after all, all the questions of science concerning this matter had been resolved by the year 1984. I don't know of any science that gets resolved in that manner with a cut-off year beyond which science does not develop any further." Partly on the advice of denialists, Mbeki's administration did everything in its power to resist the use of ART, the antiretroviral therapy that stops HIV "replicating" – essentially producing copies of itself and spreading throughout someone's body – and prevents Aids. Last year, a study by researchers at Harvard University published in The Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes estimated that if Mbeki's government had provided HIV treatment there would have been a staggering 365,000 fewer premature deaths in South Africa during his leadership.

It may be hard to see how intelligent people are sucked in by the denialists' claims, but Kalichman believes they use a number of tricks, the most common of which is known as "cherry-picking" – isolating individual, out-of-context sentences from scientific papers to illustrate their theories. "They create confusion among people who are not experts in Aids and don't recognise what they are doing for what it is," he says.

"Most people are not well-versed in science and medicine and can be easily confused by misinformation. And the denialist literature is much more user-friendly than true science. Scientists are notoriously bad at communicating with the public. But the thing is, the orthodox scientists are credible, and the denialist ones are not.

"Credibility comes through relying on accepted scientific standards and through peer review – the process that confirms that scientific work is legitimate," Kalichman continues. "People like Duesberg have not had their Aids ideas pass through the filter of peer review. They do not even do research on HIV or Aids. They are good at selecting sentences out of papers to support their arguments while ignoring all that does not fit in their preconceived notions. When it comes to Aids they do not respect the rules of science."

If you look in the right places, of course, denialist rhetoric is easy to debunk. For instance, according to New Scientist, denialists often claim that HIV has never met "Koch's postulates" – a list of conditions drawn up by the 19th-century German scientist Robert Koch that need to be met in order to prove that a particular infectious agent causes a disease. "HIV does, however, meet Koch's postulates as long as they are not applied in a ridiculously stringent way," wrote Jonny Steinberg in the 22 June issue of the magazine.

The first postulate states that the infectious agent must be found in every person with the disease – this is strongly indicated by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study cited above. Another postulate says this agent must cause the disease if given to a healthy person. In three separate incidents, US laboratory workers accidentally exposed to purified HIV tested positive for that specific strain and later developed Aids.

So who believes the denialist literature? Being "in denial" is often a means for a sufferer to cope with disease diagnosis – and this is a reaction common to other serious diseases. "When you were first diagnosed, you may have trouble believing or accepting the fact you have cancer," says the website of the US National Cancer Institute. "This is called denial. Denial can be helpful because it can give you time to feel hopeful and better about the future. Sometimes, denial is a serious problem. If it lasts too long, it can keep you from getting the treatment you need. It can be a problem when other people deny that you have cancer, even if you have accepted it."

The loved ones of those afflicted by HIV/Aids are also vulnerable to denialist literature. "The same can be true for those close to someone who tests HIV-positive – a friend or lover, a parent, a sibling, or a child," Seth Kalichman writes in Denying Aids. "Those who are in denial are the very people to whom denialists pose the greatest threat. Though denial can, for a time, serve very well as a way of adjusting to the truth, when it goes on too long, it can become maladaptive, keeping us from moving on." One of those most high-profile cases of a sufferer sucked in by denialist literature was that of US Aids activist Christine Maggiore, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1992. Influenced by Duesberg's writings, she waged a long, bitter campaign to contest the fact that the HIV virus causes Aids, and that preventive approaches and antiretrovirals can help thwart the disease's spread and prolong the lives of those who suffer from it.

She breast-fed her daughter, Eliza Jane, who died at the age of three in 2005. The Los Angeles County coroner concluded that the cause of death was Aids-related pneumonia. Maggiore refused to believe it. Her campaign ended last December with her own death from pneumonia, aged 52. No autopsy was conducted at the time, and her supporters still resisted suggestions that Maggiore died from an Aids-related disease. "Why did she remain basically healthy from 1992 until just before her death?" asked David Crowe, president of the Rethinking Aids organisational board, earlier this year.

***

Back in East London, Mike's own story fits Seth Kalichman's archetype. He describes how an ex-boyfriend was diagnosed with HIV when the two of them were still in a relationship, even though Mike discouraged him from taking the HIV test.

After the diagnosis they continued to have unprotected sex, in part fuelled by Mike's belief that he was safe – a belief that had been encouraged by denialist literature (Mike says he has not been diagnosed with HIV). Mike also discouraged his former partner from taking antiretroviral medication, which he says made his former partner sick the one time he did try it. Mike's ex-boyfriend died soon afterwards. Mike says this was, in part, due to an undiagnosed heart defect and potentially the stress caused by his HIV diagnosis.

"I wanted to do something," he says. "I had gone through some intense soul-searching at the time he was diagnosed. I went through everything all over again. I thought, 'Could I have been wrong?' If you genuinely question something, you allow any possible answer. You either dismantle something or else you reinforce your faith. It reinforced my faith [in denialist theories] – because I was really looking where I could be wrong and the orthodox perspective just seemed so weak." So he set up his website.

Another London-based denialist is filmmaker Joan Shenton, who has made 150 programmes for network television. On her website she also lists links to the work of Duesberg and Papadopulos-Eleopulos and claims to get tens of thousands of hits a year. She aims to amass an online database of 120,000 documents comprising what she terms the "changing evidence" surrounding HIV/Aids. "I will tell you why I'm doing it," she says, sitting in her Notting Hill flat. "After my huge illness which was life-threatening from iatrogenic disease [in her case, drug-induced lupus, another autoimmune disease] I barely survived and I continued to work in my profession but I was drawn towards injury from prescribed drugs." Shenton has just returned from the Rethinking Aids conference where she gave a talk entitled "Censorship in the Aids debate – the success of stifling, muzzling and a strategy of silence".

In a paper published in The Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes in 2007 it was shown that as many as one in four people in the US questions Aids orthodoxy. In the UK, the evidence available suggests that the number taking note of denialist theories is peripheral; according to the Health Protection Agency, since the late 1990s, the number of HIV-positive people accessing HIV-related care in the UK has substantially increased. Around 18,000 people were being treated in 1998; this number had more than tripled by 2007.

But does this mean we shouldn't worry about the presence of denialists in the UK? "They are killing people," says Aids expert John Moore, a professor of microbiology at Cornell University. "As a scientist I am offended by those who pervert the profession. I lot of their stuff comes high up the Google rankings and if you have a preconceived idea it can reinforce it."

The internet has undoubtedly been a boon to the denialists. "If you type 'Aids' into a Google Video search you're confronted with a ton of videos, half of which are denialist," says Nicholas Bennett, a fellow in paediatric infectious diseases at the State University of New York who runs an anti-denialist blog. "One of the highest hits you get is a video called Deconstructing the Myth. You get a ton of stuff that is denialist. If people are searching for information, are questioning and looking for a way out of their diagnosis, denialists give them hope. They think they don't have to worry and don't have to start any treatment." Such theories could continue to gain mainstream ground if House of Numbers – which has almost 1,800 fans on Facebook – wins a global distribution deal (it already has a respected publicity agency, Rogers & Cowan, working on its behalf in Los Angeles).

The film lasts about 90 minutes. At the start, Brent Leung, affecting a Michael Moore-style demeanour, is portrayed as an innocent who wants to find out more about Aids. "I was born in 1980, a year before Aids exploded on to the public consciousness," he intones. "I grew up beneath its shadow like a child raised under the threat of the mushroom cloud. You might say I am a member of the first HIV/Aids generation ... This film is an account of my journey through the shifting sands surrounding HIV/Aids." Leung explores many of the topics which so excite denialists – the link between Aids and poverty, the efficiency of HIV testing and even the existence of HIV.

In a review published on 4 September in The New York Times, critic Jeannette Catsoulis describes the film as a "globe-trotting pseudo-investigation that should raise the hackles of anyone with even a glancing knowledge of the basic rules of reasoning". Eighteen of the doctors and scientists interviewed in the film have since issued a statement saying Leung acted "deceitfully and unethically" when recruiting them (Leung says the letter's signatories are anonymous and that they hadn't seen the film when they signed the letter). John Moore, in particular, takes issue over his portrayal in House of Numbers. He says Leung told him he was trying to debunk the claims of denialists in order to secure an interview, but has in fact produced a film that does the opposite.

House of Numbers was shown at the Cambridge Film Festival in September. Bill Thompson, one of the festival trustees, who has since taken personal responsibility for its screening, has described the film as "objectionable, but also an example of a particular genre of deceptive filmmaking that I wanted to show and debunk".

But Elliot Groves, founder of the Raindance Film Festival, which showed the film in October, can be heard on YouTube describing it as "a stunning piece of filmmaking". Also in October, Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator, wrote on the magazine's website: "Is it legitimate to discuss the link between HIV and Aids? It's one of these hugely emotive subjects, with a fairly strong and vociferous lobby saying that any open discussion is deplorable and tantamount to Aids denialism. Whenever any debate hits this level, I get deeply suspicious." At the time, Nelson's blog provoked a barrage of criticism.

"Crucially, The Spectator never 'supported' the film," Nelson now says. "What we wanted to do was to screen it, and then have a panel lay their criticisms at the filmmakers. Often in history, the cures to killer diseases come from scientists thinking way outside the box. Aids has killed so many millions that we need to debate it at all possible angles. And if there is a weird, false and scientifically invalid idea then how do we treat it? My answer: that the remedy for bad science is good science. Have a rational discussion."

Is there hope for those sucked into the denialist debate? The National Aids Trust put The Independent in touch with "Daniel", an HIV sufferer in his 30s, who was diagnosed eight years ago. He was initially convinced by denialist literature. "I saw some information written by Christine Maggiore online and it got to the stage where I told my sister I was off to meet with a denialist group in San Francisco," he tells me. "It's difficult to explain why I was so taken in. The thing is, when you are diagnosed, you don't have any symptoms. You get your test back and you don't feel any different ... Some of the denialists do raise questions that at first thought seem plausible. Much of what they quote is from the 1980s, for example. They make these claims over some of the early treatments, which just kept people alive, but things have come on so much since then. There's always half-truths in everything they say."

He says his opinion was altered when was referred for treatment at his local hospital. "I thought to myself, well, if the denialists are telling the truth, then all the doctors and nurses in this hospital are part of some global conspiracy. And it's just absurd to think that. I was a bit nervous about the treatment, but a lot of people are, and that just adds fuel to the fire."

The denialists "are preying on vulnerable people, which is why medics get so worked up about House of Numbers in Britain. It is a serious problem. It puts people off testing and makes doctors' lives harder. Some of these denialists want answers for why they are going to die. But they shouldn't be destroying other people's lives."