Mbeki’s Resistance To HIV Establishment Heats Up

[Guest guest]

Memo to Anti Vaccination List members

From

Coalition For Informed Choice. Krasner, Director

PO Box 230426, Hollis, NY 11423

fax/phone: 718-479-2939, email: gk-cfic@...

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CONTENTS:

1--Preface by Krasner, CFIC

2--Washington Post Article

3--Copy of President Mbeki’s letter to Clinton

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Fellow Activists,

Many of you are aware that President Mbeki of S. Africa has questioned

the HIV=AIDS Hypothesis. This represents the greatest opportunity we’ve

ever had to thwart an AIDS vaccine. Be assured, more than just children

would be required to take such a vaccine.

The letter that he had written (below) to Clinton and the U.N. General

Secretary reveals that Mbeki holds the same views that we do. He states

eloquently that he believes that science should not be a popularity

contest, in which theories held by a minority of scientists are

necessarily wrong simply BECAUSE they are in the minority. Furthermore,

he says that those who dissent from the majority should not be forced to

comply with mandates derived from the majority view.

We’ve always looked for an advocate with political power who holds these

views. Who knew it would be a national leader? Yet it is a fragile

advantage. He is only one man. He has this power only while he’s

President. Considering the forces allied against him, he will need all

the help he can get. The medical establishment has a tremendous amount of

their credibility invested in HIV=AIDS. It is the most researched virus

in history. They call it the “Plague Of The Millenium”. They can afford

to throw overboard the rotavirus or hepatitis B vaccines. They can admit

that some vaccines can be made safer. They will be more than happy to

keep making them “safer”. But losing credibility for saying for 20 years

that HIV=AIDS will be hard for them to overcome. It would transfer to us

the credibilty we never had.

For a President to challenge the pathogenicity of any infectious agent is

unusual enough. But this one holds great importance, and the outcome of

this struggle will have lasting effects. That is why there will be

attempts to prevent any debate from taking place at the AIDS Conference

in July. I expect, for example, that Clinton will offer that we (USA)

fund the AIDS drugs that Mbeki is now being pressured to use on his

people.

Since our moment on center stage may be fleeting, I would repeat my hope

that we speak in a single voice, and avoid diluting our message with

conflicting and confusing theories. We should be issuing our propaganda

to counter the vaccination propaganda. A defense lawyer, for example,

does not provide the prosecutor with a list of possible motives that his

client might have had to commit the crime. Advocates say things that

advances their goals, and are silent on things that don’t. Our goal is to

stop mandatory vaccination. The medical establishment and the news media

give pro vaccine propaganda. Who is going to counter that, if not us?

There is good science that says that HIV is not AIDS. There is finally a

national leader who is willing to support that view. But others say that

HIV is AIDS, and that it originated from vaccines and biological weapons

research. Regardless of merit, this is obviously a conflict. The former

argues that a vaccine is not warrented. The latter lends justification

for developing a vaccine against HIV.

There are many factual elements to the AIDS Origin Theories. But there

are also many incongruent, coincidental, and irrelevant elements. All of

which makes it an easy target for our opponents. It is also complex,

requiring the public to understand molecular virology and follow a large

array of transactions and players. On the other hand, Duesberg’s Drug

Theory of AIDS is quite simple. His case against HIV=AIDS also contains

quite a number of simple arguments for the public to grasp.

Most troublesome though, is that the AIDS Origin theory introduces

“motive”. Motive, collusion, and conspiracy are almost impossible to

prove conclusively. The public prefers clarity and certainty before they

decide important issues. But they also like the inflammatory nature of

conspiracy, and the media will dwell solely on that aspect. (That is what

initially clouded the scientific debate against water fluoridation, and

kept it clouded for 45 years.) So when all is said and done, we burden

ourselves with allegations we cannot prove, and forfeit any argument

against the justification to protect the public with a vaccine against a

microbe we admitted is pathogenic. Proving it was man-made will be

inconsequential.

Strategically, Mbeki’s initiative should be less burdensome. Microbes,

like people, are innocent until proven pathogenic. If pathogenicity is

the lynchpin to justify Draconian laws and mandatory vaccination, then

you argue that it is not pathogenic. By doing so, you do much more than

affect the (socalled) benefit/risk ratio. You REMOVE the risk argument

completely. Hardly an obscure point. In math, what happens when the

denominator becomes zero? You have an insurmountable argument.

The Medical Boys know that. That is why Duesberg and other highly

credentialed scientists have been kept off the stage for 15 years. That

is why Clinton kept Mbeki’s letter from the press for two weeks. They

weren’t checking it’s authenticity. They were shitting themselves and

were deciding how to deal with this genuine threat!

---- Krasner

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From the front page of today's Washington Post:

S. African President Escalates AIDS Feud

By Barton Gellman

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, April 19, 2000 ; Page A01

South African President Thabo Mbeki has stepped up an emotional

controversy over his country’s response to AIDS, saying Africans should

chart their own course on the disease with help from, among others,

scientists who dispute the prevailing views in the West on the causes and

treatment of the disease.

At loggerheads for months with his own medical establishment over the

pandemic that is killing millions of South Africans, Mbeki has now raised

the dispute to the international arena with a passionate defense of his

approach to the crisis in a letter dispatched this month by diplomatic

pouch to President Clinton and other heads of state.

Avowing skepticism about the relevance of Western medical models to the

“uniquely African catastrophe” of AIDS, Mbeki wrote in the hand-addressed

letters that it “would constitute a criminal betrayal of our

responsibility to our own people” to mimic foreign approaches to treating

the disease. He insisted on South Africa’s right to consult dissident

scientists who deny that the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, causes

AIDS. And he accused unnamed foreign critics of launching a “campaign of

intellectual intimidation and terrorism” akin to medieval book-burnings

and “the racist apartheid tyranny we opposed.”

The African continent, where AIDS continues to spread exponentially,

faces an unprecedented demographic upheaval caused by the disease. Recent

estimates project that several sub-Saharan nations, including South

Africa, will lose a quarter of their populations to AIDS by 2010. An

estimated 4.2 million South Africans are infected with HIV, with 1,700

people newly infected every day.

Several Clinton administration officials and foreign diplomats expressed

dismay at Mbeki’s decision to intensify what they see as a diversionary

dispute and to bring it to a potentially volatile international forum.

One official made a copy of the letter available to The Washington Post,

and South Africa’s U.N. ambassador, Dumisani Kumalo, confirmed its

authenticity. Kumalo said it had been sent to Clinton and U.N. Secretary

General Kofi n, among others.

Mbeki’s words resonate widely because his nation’s new democracy and

advanced industry make it a natural leader on the continent, a status

acknowledged in its selection as host of this year’s international

conference on AIDS. So stunned were some officials by the letter’s tone

and timing--during final preparations for July’s conference in

Durban--that at least two of them, according to diplomatic sources, felt

obliged to check whether it was genuine.

“There has never been a significant international political controversy

over AIDS,” said one top-level multinational official. “This could be the

seed of one.”

Fearing just that, the Clinton administration restricted distribution of

the five-page letter, dated April 3, in an effort to prevent it from

becoming public. Asked for official comment, senior managers of U.S.

policy toward Africa concentrated their remarks on areas of agreement

with Mbeki.

“It was clearly impassioned in parts, but I thought much of its substance

was quite logical and quite compelling,” said Assistant Secretary of

State Rice, reached by phone in London. “I mean, he clearly

acknowledges the severity of the HIV-AIDS problem in Africa and in South

Africa in particular, and he goes through a persuasive description of the

efforts that have been undertaken by his administration. . . . I don’t

read Mbeki’s intent as trying to pit south versus north on the issue.

He’s making a pretty simple point, which is, ‘This is a hell of a serious

problem for Africa, and we don’t want to be constrained in the universe

of solutions that are available to us.’ “

Behind the scenes, the administration--along with allies in foreign

capitals and at the World Health Organization and U.N. AIDS program in

Geneva--is trying to tamp down the rhetoric and ensure that Mbeki does

not perceive fresh insults from abroad, officials said.

Thurman, director of the White House office of national AIDS

policy, met Friday in Atlanta with South African Health Minister Manto

Tshabalala-Msimang and Ambassador Makate Sisulu. Thurman would not

comment on “any specific correspondence between the president and any

other president,” but she made clear that the substance of Mbeki’s letter

had been their focus.

“We did talk about how important it is to make sure we’re spending most

of our time and energy focused on doing the things we know how to do to

stop this epidemic,” she said. “We need to make sure the conversations

we’re having move us forward rather than polarizing us.”

Mbeki’s letter to foreign leaders begins with much the same point. He

describes former president Mandela’s decision in 1998 to mobilize

national efforts against AIDS, creating a ministerial task force and a

national education campaign on the use of condoms and practice of safer

sex. “Similarly,” he said, “we are doing everything we can, within our

very limited possibilities, to provide the necessary medicaments and

care.”

Medicine is at the heart of the problem for South Africa, as for all

developing nations. In the wealthy nations of the West, “cocktails” of

anti-retroviral drugs have made it possible--at a cost per patient

exceeding $10,000 a year--to live indefinitely with HIV. “In the rural

parts of South Africa, where they can’t even afford dinner, they’re not

going to buy cocktail drugs,” Kumalo said.

Nor is the government planning to buy the expensive drugs. But activists

at home are putting growing pressure on Mbeki to provide AZT or

Nevirapine, two drugs that have been effective in preventing

mother-to-child transmission, to rape victims and pregnant women without

charge. More than one in five pregnant South Africans has HIV, and there

is at present no effort to block infection of their children.

Perhaps because the Western treatments are budget-breakers, Mbeki is said

by officials who know him well to have spent a great deal of time

browsing the Internet for information on AIDS. Late last year he came

across Web sites that popularize the theories of Berkeley biochemist

Duesberg, the best-known proponent of the view that HIV does not

cause AIDS and that treatment with drugs such as AZT does more harm than

good. Last month, Mbeki placed a call to Duesberg’s ally, Rasnick.

Among virtually all public health professionals, Duesberg’s and Rasnick’s

views are seen as discredited.

Even so, their work formed part of the basis for a speech Mbeki made to

Parliament late last year and for more recent statements by his health

minister blaming Nevirapine--against the judgment of most South African

scientists--for a series of recent deaths in clinical trials. Those

remarks came under harsh public attack from South African doctors and

clergymen, and some foreign AIDS experts have begun to talk of boycotting

the Durban conference.

Mbeki’s letter, turning to this controversy, shifted abruptly in tone.

“In an earlier period in human history,” he wrote, speaking of the

dissident scientists, “these would be the heretics that would be burnt at

the stake! . . . The day may not be far off when we will, once again, see

books burnt and their authors immolated by fire by those who believe that

they have a duty to conduct a holy crusade against the infidels.”

A trained economist who sprinkles speeches with poetry, Mbeki is widely

seen by South Africans--black and white--as an intellectual with a

mastery of policy detail. Unlike his predecessor, however, Mbeki is wary

of all but his closest advisors, and some foreign officials say that

frame of mind is central to the present dispute.

“It may be that these comments are extravagant,” Mbeki writes near the

close of the letter. “If they are, it is because in the very recent past,

we had to fix our own eyes on the very face of tyranny.”

Correspondent Jon Jeter in Johannesburg contributed to this report.

© 2000 The Washington Post Company

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Here is the complete text of South African President Thabo Mbeki’s letter

to Clinton and other world leaders on AIDS in Africa.

April 3, 2000

I am honoured to convey to you the compliments of our government as well

as my own, and to inform you about some work we are doing to respond to

the HIV-AIDS epidemic.

As you are aware, international organizations such as UNAIDS have been

reporting that Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for two-thirds of the world

incidence of HIV-AIDS. These reports indicate that our own country is

among the worst affected.

Responding to these reports, in 1998, our government decided radically to

step up its own efforts to combat AIDS, this fight having, up to this

point, been left largely to our Ministry and Department of Health.

Among other things, we set up a Ministerial Task Force against HIV-AIDS

chaired by the Deputy President of the Republic, which position I was

privileged to occupy at the time.

Our current Deputy President, the Hon. Zuma, now leads this Task

Force.

We also established Partnerships against AIDS, with many major sectors of

our society including the youth, women, business, labour unions and the

religious communities.

We have now also established a National AIDS Council, again chaired by

the Deputy President and bringing together the government and civil

society.

An important part of the campaign that we are conducting seeks to

encourage safe sex and the use of condoms.

At the same time, as an essential part of our campaign against HIV &

AIDS, we are working to ensure that we focus properly and urgently on the

elimination of poverty among the millions of our people.

Similarly, we are doing everything we can, within our very limited

possibilities, to provide the necessary medicaments and care to deal with

what are described as ‘opportunistic diseases’ that attach to acquired

immune deficiency.

As a government and a people, we are trying to organize ourselves to

ensure that we take care of the children affected and orphaned to AIDS.

We work also to ensure that no section of our society, whether public or

private discriminates against people suffering from HIV-AIDS.

In our current budget, we have included a dedicated fund to finance our

activities against HIV-AIDS. This is in addition to funds that the

central government departments as well as the provincial and local

administrations will spend on this campaign.

We have also contributed to our Medical Research Council such funds as we

can, for the development of an AIDS vaccine.

Demands are being made within the country for the public health system to

provide anti-retroviral drugs for various indications, including

mother-to-child transmission.

We are discussing this matter, among others with our statutory licensing

authority for medicines and drugs, the Medicines Control Council (MCC).

Toward the end of last year, speaking in our national parliament, I said

that I had asked our Minister of Health to look into various

controversies taking place among scientists on HIV & AIDS and the

toxicity of a particular anti-retroviral drug.

In response to this, among other things, the Minister is working to put

together an international panel of scientists to discuss all these issues

in as transparent a setting as possible.

As you know, AIDS in the United States and other developed Western

countries has remained largely confined to a section of the male

homosexual population.

For example, the cumulative heterosexual contact, US percentage for AIDS

cases among adults/adolescents, through June 1999 is given as 10 percent.

(HIV-AIDS Surveillance Report: Midyear edition. Vol 11, No 1, 1999. US

Department of Health and Human Services).

The cumulative absolute total for this age group is reported as being

702,748.

US AIDS deaths for the period January 1996 to June 1997 were stated by

the US CDC as amounting to 32,750. (Trends in the HIV and AIDS Epidemic:

1998. CDC).

On May 13, 1999, a SAFA-AFP report datelined Paris stated that 1998

UNAIDS and WHO reports had said that AIDS was responsible for one death

in five in Africa, or about two million people.

It quoted a Dr. Awa Coll Seck of UNAIDS as saying that there are 23

million carriers in Africa of HIV.

This SAFA-AFP report quotes Dr. Coll Seck as saying: ‘In Southern Africa,

the prevalence of the (HIV) infection has increased so much in five years

that this region could, if the epidemic continues to spread at this rate,

see its life expectancy decline to 47 by 2005.’

(Interestingly, the five years to which Dr. Coll Seck refers coincide

closely with the period since our liberation from apartheid, white

minority rule in 1994).

The report went on to say that almost 1,500 people are infected in South

Africa every day and that, at that point, the equivalent of 3.8 million

people in our country carried the virus.

Again as you are aware, whereas in the West HIV-AIDS is said to be

largely homosexually transmitted, it is reported that in Africa,

including our country, it is transmitted heterosexually.

Accordingly, as Africans, we have to deal with this uniquely African

catastrophe that:

* contrary to the West, HIV & AIDS in Africa is heterosexually

transmitted;

* contrary to the West, where relatively few people have died from AIDS,

itself a matter of serious concern, millions are said to have died in

Africa; and,

* contrary to the West, where AIDS deaths are declining, even greater

numbers of Africans are destined to die.

It is obvious that whatever lessons we have to and may draw from the West

about the grave issue of HIV-AIDS, a simple superimposition of Western

experience on African reality would be absurd and illogical.

Such proceeding would constitute a criminal betrayal of our

responsibility to our own people. It was for this reason that I spoke as

I did in our parliament, in the manner in which I have indicated.

I am convinced that our urgent task is to respond to the specific threat

that faces us as Africans. We will not eschew this obligation in favour

of the comfort of the recitation of a catechism that may very well be a

correct response to the specific manifestation of AIDS in the West.

We will not, ourselves, condemn our own people to death by giving up the

search for specific and targeted responses to the specifically African

incidence of HIV-AIDS.

I make these comments because our search for these specific and targeted

responses is being stridently condemned by some in our country and the

rest of the world as constituting a criminal abandonment of the fight

against HIV-AIDS.

Some elements of this orchestrated campaign of condemnation worry me very

deeply.

It is suggested, for instance, that there are some scientists who are

‘dangerous and discredited’ with whom nobody, including ourselves, should

communicate or interact.

In an earlier period in human history, these would be heretics that would

be burnt at the stake!

Not long ago, in our own country, people were killed, tortured,

imprisoned and prohibited from being quoted in private and in public

because the established authority believed that their views were

dangerous and discredited.

We are now being asked to do precisely the same thing that the racist

apartheid tyranny we opposed did, because, it is said, there exists a

scientific view that is supported by the majority, against which dissent

is prohibited.

The scientists we are supposed to put into scientific quarantine include

Nobel Prize Winners, Members of Academies of Science and Emeritus

Professors of various disciplines of medicine!

Scientists, in the name of science, are demanding that we should

cooperate with them to freeze scientific discourse on HIV-AIDS at the

specific point this discourse had reached in the West in 1984.

People who otherwise would fight very hard to defend the critically

important rights of freedom of thought and speech occupy, with regard to

the HIV-AIDS issue, the frontline in the campaign of intellectual

intimidation and terrorism which argues that the only freedom we have is

to agree with what they decree to be established scientific truths.

Some agitate for these extraordinary propositions with a religious

fervour born by a degree of fanaticism, which is truly frightening.

The day may not be far off when we will, once again, see books burnt and

their authors immolated by fire by those who believe that they have a

duty to conduct a holy crusade against the infidels.

It is most strange that all of us seem ready to serve the cause of the

fanatics by deciding to stand and wait.

It may be that these comments are extravagant. If they are, it is because

in the very recent past, we had to fix our own eyes on the very face of

tyranny.

I am greatly encouraged that all of us, as Africans, can count on your

unwavering support in the common fight to save our continent and its

peoples from death from AIDS.

Please accept, Your Excellency, the assurance of my response.

THABO MBEKI