Reappraising AIDS Vol. 3, no. 1

VOLUME 3, NUMBER 1, PAGE 2 REAPPRAISING AIDS JANUARY 1995

to be statistically meaningful, the African "evidence" is
used to forecast the same predicament in the West. The
claim of heterosexual spread in Africa is based on
absence of "evidence of homosexual transmission or
intravenous drugs" and the approximately equal
numbers of males and females who have AIDS as well
as positive antibody tests. The latter certainly does not
prove that AIDS is heterosexually spread-influenza and
appendicitis also have an equal sex distribution.
Given the fact that positive HIV antibody tests may be
due to the presence of antibodies formed in response
to malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy and many parasitic
diseases, it is not surprising that an equal number of
men and women will be diagnosed as "AIDS" according
to centuries-old symptoms and have a positive
antibody test.
In any case, the theory that AIDS in Africa is transmitted
heterosexually creates more problems for the HIV theory
of AIDS than it solves. A disease is said to be caused by
a sexually transmitted infectious agent if one infected
partner, say the active partner (man) transmits the
agent/disease to the passive partner (woman), who
in turn transmits the agent/disease to another man.
That is, heterosexually transmitted diseases are
transmitted bidirectionally, from men to women to men.
In the West, the largest (thousands of cases) and most
judiciously conducted prospective epidemiological
studies have proven beyond all reasonable doubt that
in both men and women the only sexual act leading to
the acquisition of "HIV antibodies"(women) or "HIV
antibodies" and eventual AIDS (gay men) is passive
(receptive) anal intercourse. In other words, in the West,
"HIV antibodies" and AIDS, like pregnancy, can only be
acquired by the passive partner. If, unlike pregnancy,
the "HIV antibodies" and AIDS are not caused by a
non-infectious agent (sperm, semen) but by HIV, then
HIV will be the only unidirectionally sexually transmitted
infectious agent. The active partner will have to acquire
HIV by other means. This is strange enough: in the whole
history of medicine there has never been a sexually
transmitted agent/disease which is spread
unidirectionally in the West and bidirectionally
(heterosexually) in Africa.

The only other alternative to this ludicrous scenario is to
agree with African physicians that positive HIV antibody
tests in Africa do NOT mean infection with HIV and that
immunosuppression and certain symptoms and diseases
which constitute African AIDS have existed in Africa
since time immemorial. According to Professor PA.K.
Addy, Head of Clinical Microbiology at the University of
Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana:
"Europeans and Americans came to Africa with
prejudiced minds, so they are seeing what they wanted
to see...I've known for a long time that AIDS is not a crisis
in Africa as the world is being made to understand. But
in Africa it is very difficult to stick your neck out and say
certain things. The West came out with those frightening
statistics on AIDS in Africa because it was unaware of
certain social and clinical conditions. In most of Africa,
infectious diseases, particularly parasitic infections, are
common. And there are other conditions that can easily
compromise or affect one's immune system."
Dr. Konotey-Ahulu from the Cromwell Hospital in London
expresses a similar view:
"Today, because of AIDS, it seems that Africans are not
allowed to die from these conditions [from which they
used to die before the AIDS era] any longer. If tens of
thousands are dying from AIDS (and Africans do not
cremate their dead) where are the graves?" According
to him, the uppermost question in the minds of intelligent
Africans and Europeans in that continent is: "Why do the
world's media appear to have conspired with some
scientists to become so gratuitously extravagant with
the untruth?"
Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos is a member of the
Department of Medical Physics and Valendar F. Turner, is
in the Department of Emergency Medicine, at the Royal
Perth Hospital, Wellington Street, Perth 6000, Western
Australia. Voice: int + 619 2243221. Fax: int + 619 2243511.
email: <[email protected]>
Eleopulos and Turner are best known for their analysis of
the faulty HIV antibody test appearing in Bio/Technology
11, 696-707 (1993). The present article appeared in the
Australian news bulletin "The Independent Monthly".

The AIDS Mirage
Hiram Caton

My first public statement on AIDS was in the concluding
section of a paper I presented in a symposium on
misconduct in science in 1987. The paper was entitled
"Truth Management in the Sciences." The concept
signaled in the title was meant to be an addition to
the repertoire of curve-fittings, selective reporting, and
disinformation then recognized by psychologists of
science. The concept suggested itself to me in the
course of my examination of the furor over Derek
Freeman's Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making
and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth. I obtained

access to unpublished material relating to the
controversy. That look behind the stage confirmed what
could be concluded from viewing the drama from the
audience perspective. Anthropologists engaged in a
face-saving exercise because, for many Americans,
Mead's name was synonymous with the field. If her
romance of the South Seas was perceived to be a hoax,
anthropology's reputation would be damaged. In the
urgency to save face, anthropologists abandoned the
truth-finder's response to Freeman's book, which was to
acknowledge his meticulous documentation of the

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