HIV and AIDS: Questions of Scientific and Journalistic Responsibility

20

HIV AND AIDS

SPIN. Celia Farber wrote a number of articles on the developing
AIDS revisionism in the magazine SPIN, for instance "AIDS - WORDS
FROM THE FRONT", 10 January 1994, p. 71, where she reported:
In 1993, we witnessed a dizzying spectacle of collapsing
certainties and quick political repositioning around the subject of
AIDS...
This year, however, the editor of Science [Daniel Koshland]
wrote a letter to the National Institute of Drug Abuse, requesting
that Duesberg be funded to test his drug hypothesis.
The mainstream [U.S.] press has remained largely oblivious to
the HIV debate, and the progressive liberal press (Village
Voice, etc.) strictly shrill, anti-debate, and ill-informed as ever.
Yet major network television proved to be surprisingly
progressive in 1993. In March, ABC aired a groundbreaking half
hour segment on the program Day One, on which they
interviewed Duesberg, Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, Dr. Robert RootBernstein, Walter Gilbert, and other HIV skeptics. Gallo threw
an on-camera tantrum, storming off the set when asked about
Duesberg, fuming that the reporters were doing a "grave
disservice to the American public."
The article goes on:
But perhaps the single most important event of 1993 was the
release of the much awaited Concorde trial, which showed that
AZT does not prolong life or improve health in people who are
HIV-positive but still healthy.5 Former AZT supporters leaped
from the sinking ship...The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal
of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis had a 1,000 percent increase in
signatures following the release of the Concorde results...In
October, one of the group's long-standing members became a Nobel
5There are indications that mortality in the AZT group was substantially higher
than in the placebo group. An editorial analysis is given in The Lancet, 7
August 1994 under the title: "Zidovudine for mother, fetus, and child: hope or
poison." "Zidovudine" is another name for AZT. Duesberg has also pointed to
the toxic effects of AZT. So did Kary Mullis in his California Monthly interview,
where he said that "most people who have HIV don't ever get AIDS, although
people who have HIV and no symptoms and take AZT die...But they die from
the poison AZT, not from AIDS."