The Spectator dabbles in denialism

The Spectator's editor, who has in the past questioned climate change [1], has now started "Questioning the AIDS consensus [2]", inspired by the denialist film House of Numbers.

Update: Now Neville Hodgkinson writes [3] in The Spectator "on a new film that challenges the tenets of the Aids religion and exposes the dangerous confusion at the heart of the industry".

New Statesman's Mehdi Hassan writes:

I have blogged before on the new Spectator editor Fraser Nelson's crude denialism of climate change and his failure to engage with the peer-reviewed scientific literature. I see he has now turned his attention to questioning the link between HIV and Aids, in his Coffee House blog post "Questioning the Aids consensus". Here is how he puts it:

Is it legitimate to discuss the strength of the link between HIV and Aids? It's one of these hugely emotive subjects, with a fairly strong and vociferous lobby saying that any open discussion is deplorable and tantamount to Aids denialism. Whenever any debate hits this level, I get deeply suspicious.

Which is why the below clip -- from a documentary which the Spectator Events division is screening next week, called House of Numbers -- aroused my interest. The film picked up awards at various American film festivals, but has since been denounced as backing Aids denialism. Yet the footage shows Luc Montagnier -- who won a Nobel prize last year for his work on Aids -- saying that many HIV infections can be shrugged off by a healthy immune system.

If Nelson had done his research, he would know that 18 angry doctors and scientists interviewed in the film have since issued a public statement claiming that the film-maker Brent Leung "acted deceitfully and unethically" when recruiting them and that House of Numbers "perpetuates pseudoscience and myths".

Read Mehdi's full post [4].