HIV and AIDS: Questions of Scientific and Journalistic Responsibility

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HIV AND AIDS

purported cause of a terrible new syndrome afflicting
homosexuals and drug-users, they may have picked the wrong
target.
This sensational possibility, now being contemplated by
numerous doctors, scientists and others intimately concerned with
the fight against the disease, deserves the widest possible
examination and debate. Yet it has been largely ignored by the
British media and suppressed almost entirely in the United
States.
The Sunday Times also wrote: "We look forward to seeing Nature
open its pages to the views of this distinguished scientist [Kary
Mullis], who received the [Nobel] prize for a genetic test now used
worldwide by Aids researchers."
The New York Times is among the newspapers which has not given
examination and debate for the above "sensational possibility".
However, it did report the existence of the controversy between the
Sunday Times and Nature in the article "British Paper and Science
Journal Clash on AIDS", even though it did not report the substance of
the documentation presented either by the Sunday Times or its critics.?
7New York Times, 10 December 1993, p. A9. Sample from this article:
But the newspaper's latest crusade - a series of articles or prominently
displayed articles boldly arguing that the AIDS epidemic in Africa is a
myth and strongly suggesting that H.I.V. is not the way the AIDS
infection spreads - has provoked bewilderment and anger among some
Government health officials, AIDS organizations and many scientists,
some of whom have accused The Sunday Times of betraying the public
trust and misleading its four million readers...
Dissident theories on the putative cause of AIDS, including those of
Dr. Peter Duesberg, an American molecular biologist, have been widely
debated over the last decade and dismissed by most Government and
research organizations as scientifically unsound...
In addition to Nature's stinging attack, The Sunday Times's coverage
has prompted criticism from Government officials, charities, and relief
agencies involved with AIDS. Kate O'Neil, a spokeswoman for the
Terrence Higgins Trust, Britain's largest AIDS charity, said she agreed
that newspapers have a responsibility to question any orthodox view.
"But the problem is, they are not giving all the facts, which means they
are misleading some and giving others false," Ms. O'Neil said.
Neville Hodgkinson, The Sunday Times's science editor and the