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This documentary was produced by the non-profit health news agency Health-e and was recently broadcast on an independent television channel in South Africa.

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Part II after the jump.

Fact: A small percentage of people infected with HIV do live for many years without developing AIDS. They are often known as long-term non-progressors. But such individuals are rare: without proper medical care, including antiretroviral drugs when needed, most HIV-positive people will eventually develop AIDS.

As putative evidence that HIV is harmless, some HIV/AIDS denialists point to examples of HIV-infected people who survive for many years, even decades, without receiving antiretroviral treatment. HIV denialists often claim that these people survived because they avoided antiretroviral therapy, and that diet, exercise, nutritional supplements or herbal therapies, stress reduction, hypnosis, and other interventions prevent progression to AIDS. These claims are untrue and dangerous.

Read the full bebunking.

by George N. Pavlakis, Rockville, MD USA

What do you do about someone who claims to be an expert, serving up half-truths, twisting the facts in credible-sounding sentences and misleading a patient? There must be some rules that apply to someone who professes to be an expert and induces patients to stop their doctor-prescribed medication. These must be applied to prevent harm to more patients. And what if these actions lead to the patient’s death?

Such is the case of Lambros Papantoniou, a journalist living in Washington, a diplomatic correspondent for several Greek media institutions for more than 30 years and a man loved by all who met him. Even in the higher political echelons of Washington, he was affectionately known as “Mr Lambros”.

During a hospital stay approximately ten years ago, Lambros was diagnosed with AIDS and given anti-retroviral therapy. Following this, his interest in the AIDS problem skyrocketed, and he sought information on it. Although he was a diplomatic correspondent, he reported on AIDS issues several times.

by Nathan Geffen, 1 December 2009

Substantially updated by the author on 7 December 2009

In a piece published in Rapport newspaper and on politicsweb, Rian Malan claims:

[D]on't trust anything the Aids bwanas say - especially not Nathan Geffen of TAC. Earlier this week, he informed the world that Zuma's mistake "was of little consequence," because other data showed that SA's death rate has doubled since l997. Hmmm. It is true that annual death registrations rose from 316,000 in 1997 to around 600,000 in 2007, but it is absurd to claim, as Geffen did, that this was almost entirely the result of Aids.

Over the same period, completeness of registration rose from around 67 percent to 81 percent, according to Stats SA, while our population rose by close on seven million. If you adjust the raw numbers accordingly, Geffen's apparent doubling shrinks to an increase of around 15 to 20 percent.

He then published a correction:

Correction: I am informed that my mathematical skills leave much to be desired. If you run the numbers in the penultimate paragraph correctly, the real increase in SA death registrations since l997 comes out at around 30 percent - still a tragedy by any reckoning, but still way short of the doubling claimed by Geffen.

First let's deal with the numbers. Malan continues to get it wrong, even in his correction. AIDS deaths have conservatively increased 6-fold since 1997, from approximately 50,000 to well over 300,000 in 2006 as well as 2007 and maybe even over 350,000, meaning the real increase in deaths -which is way more than 30%- recorded or otherwise, was mainly due to AIDS. The ASSA2003 interventions model calculates under 150,000 AIDS deaths in 2000 and about 360,000 in 2007. Approximately 45% of deaths in 2006 and 2007 were due to AIDS. The model probably overestimates AIDS deaths but not substantially enough to give any material support to Malan's argument. But even a 30% increase in mortality, as Malan acknowledges, is a tragedy.

Statements by Professor Niel Constantine and Professor Robin Weiss about the Misrepresentation of their Interviews in “House of Numbers.”

Posted November 23, 2009, to HouseofNumbers.org

The sections on HIV antibody tests in “House of Numbers” contain fragments of interviews with a number of different people, put together in a way that confuses viewers rather than clarifying what HIV testing protocols are and how they work. The editing of the interviews to try to create doubts about the worth of HIV diagnostic assays is surely intentional. Questioning HIV diagnostics is one of the main tactics of HIV denialism.

The talking heads in these sections of the video include an eager-to-please but inexpert woman working in a temporary testing tent in a South African mall, several legitimate scientists, and HIV denialist Liam Scheff and filmmaker Brent Leung. The section jumbles together bits of speech about the use of HIV antibody testing for different purposes—for screening the blood supply, for screening individuals for HIV infection and confirmatory testing, for diagnosis and for prognosis. It also scrambles remarks about different generations of tests; about tests of different qualities—those manufactured under FDA oversight and those produced in uncontrolled conditions; about different types of HIV antibody tests—conventional and rapid tests, ELISA and Western Blot; and about the use of these tests under different countries’ government protocols—Germany, South Africa, Britain, the USA. The resulting mess of words creates confusion – as it was intended to.

The history, variety, and protocols of HIV antibody testing can be confusing to non-experts. Leung and his team have exploited this in the film. But any of the legitimate scientists or clinicians in the film, asked a clear question by an ethical interviewer who would try to present their views accurately, could easily explain how HIV antibody testing works, what protocols are used to maximize accuracy in different places and at different times, the distinctions between screening and diagnostic assays, the differences between ELISAs and Western Blots, and so on. But Brent Leung sought to confuse, not clarify. He wanted to make it seem like the tests are unreliable and that the scientists he interviewed didn’t know disagreed with each other about HIV tests. The reality is very different. HIV antibody tests are extremely accurate, and various confirming protocols (two or three different types of tests) are used in different places.

by Dr John Moore, PhD (Originally published by health-e)

Surveys have consistently shown that over 40% of Americans do not believe in evolution. It is not surprising, then, that our society is vulnerable to being fooled by people who misrepresent scientific or historical facts.

We are now all too familiar with the crazed activities of the 'Birthers', an ad hoc, right wing political group refusing to accept President Obama was born in the United States. Earlier this year, we saw media coverage of the insane views of a clique that refuses to accept American astronauts walked on the moon 40 years ago. The "9/11 Truth Movement" flourishes on the internet, arguing that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not hit by hijacked jetliners, but were blown up by the CIA at the behest of Israeli intelligence. Conspiracy groups like these usually do little real damage to society, although the activities of the "9/11 Truth Movement" foster anti-Semitism and insult the memories of the nearly 3000 Americans who died on 9/11. Unfortunately, other equally bizarre and factually unfounded, internet-based conspiracy groups can, and do, harm, even kill, significant numbers of people. This is not just an American problem, as the ripple effects of conspiracy theories spread worldwide via the internet. Indeed, the most serious consequences of one such group’s actions have been felt in Africa.

by Nathan Geffen, 19 November 2009

In 2001, Rian Malan wrote an article in Rolling Stone questioning the accuracy of HIV tests in order to disparage the evidence of a growing HIV epidemic in South Africa. In 2003 he published similar articles in the Spectator and Noseweek. All these articles were replete with errors. I subsequently debunked the latter two in a January 2004 article.

One of Malan's errors was particularly serious. He presented miscalculated, massively understated estimates of AIDS deaths which he falsely attributed to Stats South Africa. As I wrote then, the mistake was so serious and obvious that it raised questions about Malan's basic competence as a research journalist -or more disturbingly- about his motives and integrity.

In Mbeki's 2004 State of the Nation speech he quoted from Malan and spoke warmly about him. It was not explicitly about HIV, but to anyone following the debate at the time, it was clear that Mbeki was grateful for Malan's support on AIDS.

By Nathan Geffen, 16 November 2009

On 2 November 2009, Statistics South Africa released the latest mortality data, which goes up to 2007 (Stats SA, 2009). This table gives the number of recorded deaths per year:

You do not need to be a statistician to be astounded by this. Recorded deaths have increased over 90% in a decade. Improved death registration and population growth can account for only a small portion of this increase. The vast majority of additional deaths are due to the HIV epidemic. A huge body of evidence shows this. For example, there has been a three-fold increase in TB deaths over the same period and TB is the leading cause of death in people with HIV. Also the age pattern of the deaths --younger instead of older adults comprise the bulk of them-- and the drop in the median age of death from 51 in 1997 to 44 in 2007 are consistent with the way AIDS works. (For more detailed evidence see Dorrington et al. 2006, Dorrington et al. 2001 and Stats SA, 2002).

by Seth Kalichman (Originally published in the New Humanist)

Imagine that you or someone you love just received an HIV positive test result. The news is devastating. After a short time you begin to face the diagnosis. You turn to the Internet for answers. Searching the words “AIDS diagnosis” brings up thousands of websites. A whirlwind of information spins your mind. One credible-looking website, Aids.org, reads: “There is no cure for AIDS. There are drugs that can slow down the HIV virus and slow down the damage to your immune system. There is no way to ‘clear’ HIV from the body. Other drugs can prevent or treat opportunistic infections (OIs). In most cases, these drugs work very well. The newer, stronger ARVs have also helped reduce the rates of most OIs. A few OIs, however, are still very difficult to treat.”

With a click of the mouse, an equally credible-looking site, Aliveandwell.org, asks: “Did you know … Many experts contend that AIDS is not a fatal, incurable condition caused by HIV? That most of the AIDS information we receive is based on unsubstantiated assumptions, unfounded estimates and improbable predictions? That the symptoms associated with AIDS are treatable using non-toxic, immune-enhancing therapies that have restored the health of people diagnosed with AIDS and that have enabled those truly at risk to remain well?”

Which do you trust? Which do you believe? Which would you want to believe? Would you choose to believe there may be hope offered by medical treatments or would you prefer to believe that HIV is harmless? This simple example illustrates the lure of AIDS denialism.

A website that is advertised via Google ads, is promoting alternative, unproven and untested medicines for the treatment of HIV. The website is http://www.hivsecrets.com. Upon registering with it, a report titled HIV Alternative Therapies Report is made freely available for download. This report is written by a Ms Shirley Wyand. Ms Wyand has no known expertise in the science of HIV/AIDS.

The report is replete with misconceptions. For example, it states, "Since Western medical science offers no cure and few treatments for AIDS, people living with HIV are open to other options, and a tradition of gathering and sharing treatment information already exists." On the contrary, antiretroviral treatment is a very effective chronic treatment for HIV. There are also many effective medicines that treat AIDS-related opportunistic infections. There are no alternative treatments for HIV that have been shown to be effective. Indeed, once a medicine is shown to be effective it is no longer an alternative one.

Another example of the report's misconceptions is that it promotes an untested product called Revivo tea. This products advertisements touting its efficacy for the treatment of HIV have recently been banned in South Africa by that country's Advertising Standards Authority.

Anthony Mbewu with Matthias RathAnthony Mbewu, the current President of the Medical Research Council of South Africa (MRC), has been appointed the Executive Director of the Swiss-based Global Forum for Health Research (GFHR).

The South African government under former President Mbeki and former Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, pursued an AIDS denialist ideology that was responsible for at least 300,000 premature deaths and tens of thousands of preventable HIV infections. [1-2] Mbeki and Tshabalala-Msimang were the main protagonists in this crime against humanity. But there were several politicians and civil servants whose actions and inactions helped extensively. Anthony Mbewu was one of them. An appointment to a top position in Geneva hardly seems appropriate for someone with his questionable track record. This included misrepresenting the relative importance of HIV as a cause of death, supporting the vitamin salesman Matthias Rath, playing down the known benefits of antiretroviral treatment, promoting absurd conspiratorialist thinking and over-promoting multi-vitamins and traditional medicine as potential responses to AIDS.

Matthias Rath, with the support of Tshabalala-Msimang, conducted unauthorised experiments on people with HIV, imported and distributed his products unlawfully and claimed multivitamins alone reversed the course of AIDS, in contrast to antiretrovirals which he claimed were toxic. Anthony Mbewu helped establish Rath's presence in South Africa.

by Jeanne Bergman

The lynchpin of Brent Leung’s argument in “House of Numbers” that HIV does not cause AIDS is the headline of a 2007 article on ScienceDaily.com that read, “Sudden Loss Of T Cells Is Not Trigger For AIDS, New Study Suggests.” [1] The screen shows the article’s headline and first paragraphs for 12 seconds (a very long time in “House of Numbers”), while Leung, in a voice-over, intones, “In late 2007, ScienceDaily reported that three prominent research teams had published papers in the Journal of Immunology, challenging the theory that the sudden loss of T-cells triggers disease and AIDS.” Since T cell destruction is understood to be the primary mechanism by which HIV destroys the immune system, this seems to seriously challenge the HIV/AIDS paradigm.

"House of Numbers" offers new information about the late Christine Maggiore's experience with HIV testing.  In the movie, her oral narrative and the dated lab reports on screen simply don't line up. What the film clearly shows by including the lab work is that Maggiore was HIV infected, and the reports suggest that her immune system controlled the virus well for some time. Commentary are placed in the blocks.

Christine Maggiore: “In 1992, I was encouraged by a doctor to take what’s called an HIV test as a mater of social responsibility, and I was shocked and devastated and horrified when the results came back positive. It was one of those moments that everyone fears their whole life.  A week later, I take the same test to an AIDS specialist. He looks and says, this isn’t a positive test. I don’t know what this test means.”

The screen shows a lab report from Patricia O’Connell, NP, for Christine Maggiore, dated 02/24/92. Resolution is not good, but it looks like two bands—P24 and P120/160—of a Western Blot were reactive, the rest non-reactive.  This VERY clearly is a positive test.  The test interpretation instructions are below and she has a positive WB according to this test’s criteria (p24 and gp120).

Salim Abdool Karim with his wife and collaborator Quarraisha Abdool Karim
Photo credit: CAPRISAIn this article prominent South African AIDS researcher, Prof Salim S. Abdool Karim, calls for a truth commission to account for South Africa's past HIV/AIDS denialist policies and rebuild trust:

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is one of the greatest challenges facing post-democracy South Africa. In 2007, the country, which is home to less than one per cent of the world's population, carried 17 per cent of the global burden of HIV infection — and the virus continues to spread relentlessly.

The government's response to the epidemic during the last decade has contributed to this disproportionate burden. It not only questioned the reliability of HIV testing, the safety and efficacy of antiretroviral drugs and the accuracy of statistics on AIDS-related morbidity and mortality, but also the very premise that HIV causes AIDS.

Deliberate attempts were made to undermine scientific evidence as the basis for action and to place politics at odds with science. President Thabo Mbeki's AIDS Advisory Panel, set up in 2000, marked a low point in the government's relationship with scientists when he asked AIDS scientists to engage AIDS 'denialists' in a debate for political adjudication.

Newsweek Exposes Duesberg’s Psychopathology

by Jeanne Bergman for AIDStruth.org

Peter Duesberg:
Photo by Seth Kalichman

"The whole dissident idea attracts a lot of crazies. And then all of a sudden, without realizing it, you've become one of them."

—Peter Duesberg

Newsweek this week published a strange and very revealing profile of the HIV über-denialist Peter Duesberg by Jeneen Interlandi (“The World’s Most Reviled Genius: Can the Scientist Who Denies the Cause of AIDS Be Trusted to Cure Cancer?” Oct. 19, 2009, pp. 44-48). The article asks if Duesberg’s aneuploidy theory of cancer may have some real promise that is being ignored because he has completely destroyed any scientific credibility he ever had by refusing to acknowledge that he was wrong about HIV and AIDS. (The short answer to this question is simply: no. Aneuploidy isn’t being ignored, much better scientists than Duesberg are working on it, and it is unlikely to be the key to the cause or cure of cancers. [1]) More significantly, the piece reveals a lot about the character and pathology of the man behind the denialist movement.

Interlandi describes how Duesberg has “toiled in scientific purgatory” at Berkeley. An embarrassment to the University, he has been relegated to a crummy little lab in a shabby building, with no grant funding, no promising graduate students, and no respect from anyone—including other cancer researchers working on aneuploidy. He is no longer allowed to teach. Duesberg clearly understands that this follows from his failed theory that HIV is harmless. Interlandi identifies in him a core conflict between two equally disturbing character traits: “he craves a return to respectability, [and] he refuses to cede any ground to his adversaries.” (See AIDStruth’s article about his malignant narcissism.) But Duesberg seems unable to grasp that the contempt is the result of his refusal to accept the conclusive scientific evidence that HIV is the cause of AIDS, and of his persistent proselytizing of his disproven claims about HIV, AIDS and antiretrovirals, which has caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, particularly in South Africa.

by Jeanne Bergman

“House of Numbers” is a film with a hidden agenda: it tries to make viewers doubt the reality that the virus called HIV exists and causes AIDS. It conceals this agenda behind a false veneer of honest inquiry. The filmmaker, Brent Leung, told a Huffington Post blogger: “I am not a denialist. Posing questions is very different than denying something. … I traveled the globe speaking with scientists, activists, clinicians, journalists and patients asking questions. My main goal? To educate myself and others, and to generate discussion on important questions that have not yet been answered.” But Leung is an HIV denialist—he has said he is “neutral” on the issue of HIV/AIDS, which means he rejects the evidence-based science that has conclusively proved the existence of HIV and its causative role in AIDS, a fatal disease syndrome. His film is supported and promoted only by denialists. And Leung in fact got the information he sought from the legitimate scientists, doctors, and advocates he interviewed, but he then edited it out of the film to deceive and confuse viewers. The audience is manipulated to reach the wrong answers to the questions he ask. Since Leung leaves his own positions unstated, he dodges accountability for the film’s potential impact—namely, that people might decide that they don’t need to protect themselves or others from being infected with HIV, or that people living with HIV might reject medical care and the medications that could keep them healthy.

Here we summarize the fake “questions” Leung raises in the film, and provide real, evidence-based answers.

David Rasnick is a co-author with Peter Duesberg and others of an article in Medical Hypothesis which claims that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. The abstract of the article states, "we call into question the claim that HIV antibody-positives would benefit from anti-HIV drugs, because these drugs are inevitably toxic and because there is as yet no proof that HIV causes AIDS." [1]

We note an undeclared conflict of interests in this article by David Rasnick. Rasnick was a researcher for a company called the Rath Health Health Foundation Africa. This organisation promoted and distributed (and in terms of South African law, sold) micronutrient products as alternatives to antiretroviral treatment in South Africa. It also conducted an unauthorised clinical trial using these products as alternatives to antiretrovirals on people with HIV. The company never published the results of this trial in a peer-reviewed medical journal, but instead published adverts purporting to report the trial's results, a practice that is considered unethical in medical research. Rasnick is described in these adverts as one of the researchers on the trial.

Fact: HIV has been shown to be exogenous throughout 20+ years of research.

An endogenous retrovirus is one whose genetic material has been incorporated into that of the host. This happens when the genome of the virus incorporates itself into the chromosome of the host's sex cell (sperm or egg) – or its progenitor – and thus, upon fertilization becomes part of the normal genome found in every cell in the body of the host. Over time, the endogenous retroviral genome usually accumulates deleterious mutations rendering it incapable of productive infection. One myth used by denialists is that HIV is one of these endogenous retroviruses. However, several lines of evidence from the published scientific literature refute this claim, and prove that it is an exogenous virus, found only in CD4+ T-cells and a few other CD4+ cell types (such as macrophages) and not found in most other host cells.

AIDSTruth member and Treatment Action Campaign treasurer Nathan Geffen writes in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes:

Edward Mabunda

Edward Mabunda died on April 9, 2003. At least another 600 people died of AIDS in South Africa that day.(1) Edward was just 36 years old. He left behind a wife and 3 children. He was also a leader in the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). He became an icon of the movement because of the fiery poetry that he recited to thousands of people. His poems urged former President Thabo Mbeki to make antiretrovirals (ARVs) available in South Africa’s public health system. He died because he could not obtain these life-saving medicines in time.(2)

From 1999 to 2007, Mbeki and his Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang obstructed and then undermined the implementation of highly active ARV treatment (HAART) and prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in the public health system. Two studies, conducted independently of each other, conservatively calculated that over 300,000 people died because of Mbeki’s AIDS denialist policies.(3–5) Edward Mabunda was one of them.

We have learnt that Dr Jim Murtagh has made false claims about his relationship with some members of aidstruth.org in email correspondence with AIDS denialists. We do not wish to be drawn into the squabbles of people not associated with us. Nevertheless, we print the following clarification to rectify confusion generated by Dr Murtagh's emails: