HIV and AIDS: Questions of Scientific and Journalistic Responsibility

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HIV AND AIDS

numbers game still goes on, as reported for instance in a New York Times
article "Obstacle-Strewn Road to Rethinking the Numbers on AIDS" (1
March 1994, p. B8), by Lawrence K. Altman, M.D., who regularly writes
on HIV and AIDS for the Times, and systematically calls HIV "the
virus that causes AIDS". The article started: "Determining how many
Americans are infected with the virus that causes AIDS is an imprecise
science at best... it appears that the current estimate of one million will
be lowered...For planning purposes, health officials need to know
where and how many new cases of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS,
are occurring." In his article, Altman gave a revised figure ranging from
600,000 to 800,000, and reported that the figures might go down further.
Note that the figure of 1 million "estimated cumulative HIV
infections" in North America has also been given by the World Health
Organization ("The HIV/AIDS Pandemic 1993 Overview", The WHO,
June 1993). This figure and other WHO figures for Western Europe
(500,000) and Sub-Saharan Africa (8 million) were reproduced in a
table prominently displayed in the article "HIV: beyond reasonable
doubt" (The New Scientist, 15 January 1994, p. 24).
Just what is "beyond reasonable doubt"? Considering the way some
estimated numbers are now dropping radically, it follows that official
figures from the CDC or WHO cannot be trusted. The figures these
organizations put out add to the chaotic and unreliable mess which
exists in lieu of information about HIV and various diseases.
6. Hemophiliacs. Questions have also arisen about AIDS being
transmitted to hemophiliacs via blood transfusions. Such questions
were raised for example in Peter Duesberg's letter to Harold Jaffe.
Duesberg was careful about distinguishing HIV from diseases presumed
to have been caused by HIV. He wrote:
It is frequently claimed that transfusion AIDS was eliminated
by eliminating HIV from the nation's blood supply. Of course,
screening for HIV did essentially eliminate the transmission of
this virus by transfusions. But it did not affect the mortality and
morbidity of recipients of transfusions. We must here distinguish
between non-hemophiliacs and hemophiliacs...
(a) Non-hemophiliacs. Since all transfusion recipients, other
than hemophiliacs, are already severely ill by the time they
receive their transfusions, the mortality rates of HIV-positives
and negatives provide the most objective statistics on the