In 1998, a number of politicians, including President Mbeki, enthusiastically embraced virodene as an inexpensive therapeutic against AIDS without any scientific evidence. The government's refusal to give AZT to pregnant women for the prevention of maternal-fetal HIV transmission flies in the face of evidence showing that AZT and nevirapine reduce mother-to-child HIV transmission. This decision poses serious moral and ethical dilemmas in a nation where maternal-fetal transmission of HIV accounts annually for 10% of the total HIV disease burden. Most recently, the politically motivated suggestion, in the absence of scientific evidence, that malnutrition and poverty cause AIDS in Africa is not only absurd but may also represent a form of national denial. South Africa is rapidly becoming a fertile ground for the types of pseudoscience often embraced by politicians.
— M. W. Makgoba, President of the Medical Research Council of South Africa, May 2000
- AIDS Denialism vs. Science [1] - AIDS denialists believe, with a faith unshakable by fact, that HIV does not cause AIDS and that antiretrovirals should not be used for HIV prevention or treatment. Their misrepresentations and pseudoscientific views have cost lives in South Africa and elsewhere.
- Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (University of California Press, 1996) [2]
- HIV/AIDS: The Peril of Pseudoscience [3]
