David Crowe's Incisive Interview with David Crowe on Global Warming

I was recently asked whether AIDS Denialists are involved in other denialisms, such as Holocaust denial, the anti-vaccine movement, 9/11 Truth Seeking, etc. 

The answer is, of course, yes. Gary Null is an AIDS Denier and Cancer Denialist. Liam Scheff and Tom Bethell are AIDS Denialists and creationists. There is overlap between AIDS Deniers and the anti-vaccine crowd. Henry Bauer is an AIDS Denier and a well known Anti-Reality Activist. 

I suppose I should not have been surprised when I saw that David Crowe, President of the Rethinking AIDS Society, is also a Global Warming Denialist. David Crowe is well known for his AIDS and cancer denialism. But Global Warming too? 

I suppose when it comes to the wacky world of AIDS Denialism, nothing should surprise us. 

My Position on Global Warming and Climate Change

by David Crowe

March 19, 2010

If I can be classified it would be as a left-leaning environmentalist, with a history of environmental concerns dating back to my pre-teen years in the 1960s. I was one of the founders of the Alberta Greens political party in 1990 based on support for a federal Green candidate in 1988, and was the party's president until 2004 and then CFO until a right-wing takeover in late 2008.

I have organized my position on global warming/climate change as a self-interview because my concerns have arisen as I have been asked more questions about this and some of my green friends exhibit shock at my position.

Q1. Is Global Warming Happening?

It is impossible to know if global warming is happening without waiting for hundreds or thousands of years to see if short term trends go up or down. Of course we can't wait that long, so the question is whether catastrophic global warming is imminent. That also is impossible to know. If the changes are small they are also manageable.It is also impossible to define a global temperature. Even small biases in measurements made in a small number of points over the globe (such as heat island effects due to measurements near growing cities) can create false temperature increases. When extrapolated and fed into a mathematical model that accelerates them, dire predictions can appear on computer screens around the world.

Q2. Why are you speaking up now?

I feel forced to speak now as environmentalists are trying to enforce adherence to the climate change theory even as more and more evidence comes out against it. For a long time I didn't speak because I'm not a climate scientist but I gradually realized that all the people telling me this were not climate scientists either and, in fact, I am probably far better educated and experienced to comment than most of them.

Q3. Don't the data show an unambiguous trend?

I recently looked at arctic and antarctic ice area data. The arctic data does show a trend towards lower amounts of ice since records began in 1979 but antarctica shows, if anything, the opposite trend. Longer term records only show the decline in arctic sea ice since about 1979. It is quite likely that this is due to data from 1979 on not being comparable. Furthermore, 30 years is not even a drop in the geological bucket. To state that this is a firm trend, when it is only found in the north, and records for the last couple of hundred years are not available, is not warranted.A panel, including James Hansen, wrote in 2000 that global warming was real despite there only being evidence that the surface was warming, not the troposphere (indicating that the atmosphere was not actually warming). They defended this by saying, "The disparity between surface and upper air trends in no way invalidates the conclusion that surface temperature has been rising" (but that's not the question. Is the atmosphere warming?), noting that despite their best efforts, "a substantial disparity remains" (between surface and tropospheric temperatures), admitted that other factors were highly significant (including volcanoes), blamed human activities for global cooling (including ozone-depleting substances) and finally "cautions that temperature trends based on data for such short periods of record, with arbitrary start and end points, are not necessarily indicative of the long-term behavior of the climate system".
Clearly there is data in both directions. But the climate of the planet varies with every day, every season, with influence from many human activities, amounts of volcanic activity and from variations in the output of the sun. Climate is incredibly complex, with many feedback loops that are poorly understood. It is impossible to draw conclusions based on a few year's data especially when the data is being interpreted by scientist who have a priori decided what the trend is.
Furthermore, 'ClimateGate' is just the most recent evidence that data is being manipulated to make the picture cleaner and more biased towards global warming being real – "Manufacturing Certainty".

Q4. Don't You Believe Any Warming is Happening?

That's not the question. Only if the warming that is happening is intolerable should we take these dramatic actions. If mild warming to the planet is occurring, any disruptions will occur over many years and can be easily mitigated. After all, dramatic changes in the earth have occurred relatively frequently due to perfectly natural events like tsunamis, landslides, volcanic eruptions, raising and lowering of land and sea levels, floods, earthquakes and so on.The actions being proposed by climate change proponents are dramatic, have significant side effects, probably won't have the desired effect, but can only be justified if the changes in climate are so dramatic that the very future of humans is threatened.
The right question is, "Don't You Believe that Catastrophic Global Warming is Imminent?" No, I don't.
But even the acceptance of a minor warming trend is problematic. Antarctic sea ice appears to show no trend since 1978. Arctic ice shows a small trend downwards since 1978, but one that is dwarfed by the annual variation and that could easily be reversed by a few cold winters. Data from half a million years ago shows several warm periods higher than today.Data from five million years ago based on sediment cores shows a general cooling trendmeaning that today the earth is cooler than most of the time from 3 million years on back and that many warming periods to today's values or higher have occurred in the past.

Q5. Aren't Hurricane Katrina and the Burmese Typhoon Proof that Global Warming is Happening?

Yes, but not of climate change. These tragedies have something in common with a third, the Indonesian Tsunami. The problem is that tsunami's are not connected to climate change, but to geological phenomena (movements of tectonic plates). The common denominator in the increased devastation is coastal forest destruction. Allowing coastal forests to regrow will provide a buffer of protection to people all over the world from these destructive ocean events. It is entirely speculative that reducing the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere will have any benefits. Given the randomness with which these events occur it is not clear how you could ever determine whether changes to the composition of the atmosphere were helping to reduce the frequency or destructiveness of severe weather events.

Q6. Aren't Some Proposals of Climate Campaigners Justified?

Yes. Some actions (such as reducing use of fossil fuels) can be justified for other reasons. I am concerned about actions that can only be justified by prophesies of climate doom. These actions are clearly counter-productive if we are not facing climate doom as they take considerable energy and will produce their own side effects. We should focus on actions that can be justified as solutions to known problems which means that we can ignore climate change and go back to real environmentalism.If you should only undertake actions that have a justification other than climate change then you can factor climate change out of the equation. Furthermore, climate change action requires global agreement, which simply will not happen. At Copenhagen we see true climate change fanatic James Hansen arguing against an agreement because it won't be extreme enough.

Q7. If Some Actions Are Justified Isn't Climate Change Campaigning Good?

No. The focus on climate change has resulted in orders of magnitude more talk than action. Climate change action is only perceived as useful if actions are universal. However, action against other environmental damage is beneficial on a small scale. Public transit would be a benefit to the world if only Canada invested. An end to mountain-top removal coal-mining would be a benefit to the world if only the USA did it. More bike paths would be beneficial if only Holland built them. Reforestation would be a great thing even if only in Nepal and Burma. Reduction of coal-burning would be a benefit to the world if only China did it.Traditional environmental activism is "Think Globally. Act Locally". Climate Change is "Think Globally. Act Globally". Even if global action on CO₂ was warranted, it will never happen because it is impossible to get such sweeping global agreements, it just leads to treaties with nice words that can be safely ignored.

Q8. Isn't Talking Good?

All climate change campaigners appear to do is talk. I am confident that no substantive improvements to the environment will ever occur because of global warming actions. But that is not a problem for some people – money will be made through massive increases in research funds, speculations on the carbon market and installation of equipment of speculative value, such as systems to pump CO₂ into the ground.What the planet really needs is action justified by traditional environmental principles – reduction of exposure to toxic chemicals being one of the primary goals. And CO₂ is not a toxic chemical. Other goals should be the elimination of unsustainable killings of animals (especially fish), reduction in extraction of raw materials (including fossil fuels) and a halt to habitat destruction, especially of forests and ocean environments. Many of these things will, as a by-product, reduce the production of CO₂.

Q9. Aren't Carbon Taxes and Trading Good?

Climate Change is based on a neo-liberal philosophy. I define this as a fundamental belief that government is bad and that the free market is good, but a grudging acceptance that government influence is sometimes necessary, but only through a free market mechanism. Carbon taxes will not influence the behaviour of the well-off (look at how much more they spend on cars than they need to). And if the funds are merely redistributed they won't pay for things like public transit, bike paths or energy conservation projects. And redistribution of carbon taxes and carbon cap-and-trade are invitations to fraud, which will make many neo-liberals very rich, and make the planet poorer.

Q10. Aren't Carbon Credits Good?

We are now realizing that carbon credits are likely to result in the eviction of poor people in the third world to make space for trees to assuage the conscience of rich people in the first world. If even this much happens. There are many avenues for fraud in the carbon credit market leading to an incentive to produce paperwork indicating that carbon is being sequestered when it really isn't. Only the perception counts. People may claim credits for things that already exist, claim double credits in different places, or simply claim credits for things that don't exist.Another example of corruption is the excess credits mysteriously given to steelmaker ArcelorMittal and Eurofer in Europe after extensive lobbying of the European Commission, including threats to move jobs out of Europe. This will result in windfall profits to these companies for not producing a harmless gas that they would never have produced anyway.

Q11. What's Wrong with Climate Reparations?

Sending huge amounts of western money to third world countries is a truly horrible idea. This will do nothing to reduce CO₂ emissions, and will almost certainly not produce the mitigation projects that it is presumably intended for. Most countries are ruled by corrupt elites (high level corruption is rife in countries as diverse as America, Nigeria and China), and most of this money will disappear into their pockets, or in megaprojects such as large hydro-electric generation dams that will not improve the life of ordinary people, and may end up displacing them.A more fundamental problem that neo-liberals don't understand is that money does not actually solve all problems. If the west continues to operate mines and oil production without adequate safeguards for workers, the environment and people in the vicinity; if hydro projects continue to displace people living sustainable lives; if plantations continue to gobble up land and produce crops for export not for local consumption; if chemical production continues to poison workers, rivers, air, groundwater and our food – what does it matter if buckets of cash are shoveled into capital cities where little will leak out?
What is needed is local government action to eliminate bad practices and a reforming of global ties to put principles of fair trade (which value the environment, workers and people in both trading nations) above the principles of free trade (which value only free movement of capital and goods). If an industrial practice is not in the overall interests of a nation it should be banned – not taxed or traded.

Q12. Can't we Trust Scientists?

There is a lot of evidence that the activity often called science, and the scientists who practice this activity (as opposed to those few who have a monk-like dedication to the scientific method), are not trustworthy. Peer review is a bankrupt process, for example. It is lousy at detecting fraud but very good at suppressing innovative thought. Financial conflicts of interest are frequent and rarely disclosed. Scientists often fall into the trap of focusing on their next grant rather than what important questions need to be asked (including questioning their own assumptions and biases). The prejudices of the system are amplified in this way. Those who conform are rewarded with grants which inform the granters that this is a subject of great interest.The proof of this is that there have been many scientific errors that have survived for decades – Piltdown Man, Radical Mastectomy, (opposition to) continental drift, irradiation of the thymus, the germ theories of scurvy, pellagra and SMON. We, like all generations before us, falsely believe that all false beliefs lie in the past.
The ClimateGate scandal illustrated this problem well. Without access to data scientists cannot fully evaluate the work of others. Phil Jones, the head of the CRU, at the center of this scandal, said, "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" That is exactly why the data should be released. If it can pass scrutiny from a skeptical, critical, cynical scientist then our confidence in the data and interpretations drawn from it will be much higher. It is a waste of time to give data to a scientist whose intention is to prove that previous interpretations are correct.

Q13. Do you agree that no credible scientists questions global warming?

This is one of the most absurd aspects of the global warming debate. This can only be put forward by people who have no understanding of science or even simple logic.It is not even possible to define the term "scientist", let alone, "credible scientist". If those who believe in climate change are put in charge of defining "credible" then they will define it as people who agree with them. This is how dictators come to believe that they are democrats – because all critics are silenced.
There are credible scientists who oppose the global warming/climate change theory just as there are credible scientists who opposed the HIV=AIDS=Death theory, educated and accomplished scientists who oppose some or all vaccination, those who oppose water fluoridation as well as many other sacred cows of modern science. All of them get the same treatment – they are marginalized by preventing them from publishing, denying them grants and ridiculing them as "not credible", "cranks", "conspiracy theorists", "isolated", "paranoid", "delusional" or even "dangerous".

Q14. What's Wrong with Computerized Mathematical Models?

A lot. They tend to reflect the prejudices of the designer. They can be tweaked until they produce the 'right answer'. But what is the right answer except what the designer expects – their prejudices?How can a climate model be validated except by monitoring its predictions over many years?
A good example of the problems has occurred in South Africa where mathematical models have accused AIDS "denialists" of hundreds of thousands of deaths. In this case it has been possible to consult actual statistics (ignored by the modelers in favor of statistics fabricated by WHO in Geneva) that show that the South African population is steadily growing, with no signs of any unusual rate of deaths let alone a population decline. Yet, due to prejudices in favour of the HIV=AIDS=Death dogma the fraudulent mathematical model is widely cited despite its obvious flaws, presumably because it is what the establishment wants to think. People who say that AIDS drugs are toxic and ineffective must be silenced so anything that does the job is acceptable – even lies.
We now know that climate change scientists are guilty of the same desire – to silence their critics by denying them the ability to publish, by demonizing them in the press – by using the infrastructure of science to punish them. Mathematical models are infinitely malleable and are important tools in this endeavour. Whether they are accurate is something we won't know for many years.

Q15. Is Global Warming a Scientific Theory?

No, because it is not a testable or falsifiable hypothesis.It's a bit like asking whether there are a series of 100 '1' digits in the full expansion of pi. You produce consecutive digits for an arbitrary amount of time and don't find such a string but it doesn't tell you whether you haven't yet looked far enough or there is no such string. It's worse with Global Warming because there is no identifiable mathematical signal that says, "Yes, it is happening". 10 years of warming (even if you accept that there is such a thing as a single global temperature) could be followed by 20 years of cooling. You simply cannot know.
The flipside of this is that there is no way to refute the theory. 10 years of global cooling does not prove that global warming is not happening, it could just be that other temporary factors are overwhelming the human signal.
If there were no side effects from reacting to global warming this wouldn't matter, but there are.
Another way to look at it is that a scientific theory should have predictive value. Global Warming theorists make a lot of predictions but we are expected to accept them and act on them long before we can know whether the predictions are true. Scientific theories make predictions that can be tested and shown to be reasonably accurate before the theory is accepted.
Some global warming proponents claim that this doesn't matter. According to the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) when faced with the coldest Chinese winter since 1951, "Professor Chen Xing, a climate change expert at Nanjing University, said people should not include blizzards when trying to overturn the hockey stick forecast. 'The models are not meant to generate a weather forecast. They are a hypothesis and should not be used as evidence in decision making,' he said."
But that is exactly what we are being asked to do. A prediction is made that sea levels will rise therefore we should plan to evacuate some islands. A prediction is made that average temperatures will rise therefore crops should change to those that prefer warmer weather. If predictions cannot be made then Globel Warming is not a scientific theory. If predictions are made and they are dramatically wrong, then the Global Warming hypothesis is falsified.

Q16. Isn't Climate Change a Simple Explanation for a Complex Phenomenon?

Yes, suspiciously simple. But even the full Global Warming theory that predicts that greenhouse gases alone will bring catastrophic change to the earth's climate is too complex for most proponents. It has become solely a CO₂ theory, with other global warming gases (including that notorious pollutant water vapor, as well as cow farts, i.e. methane) being virtually ignored.Global warming is also in the process of edging out other (real) problems. The process is simple, the author of an article says that a particular problem is caused by a combination of global warming and another well known problem (such as deforestation) or natural phenomenon. They then continue to talk as if global warming was the only problem, successfully having evicted yet another long known environmental problem from attention.

Q17. Isn't Global Warming Denial A Right Wing Conspiracy?

Two problems here. First of all the phrase "denial" is deliberately chosen to evoke those who deny that the Nazi extermination campaign of Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Socialists and other "undesirables" occurred. It has also been invoked to dismiss people who claim that HIV is not the cause of AIDS ("AIDS Denialists").
It is more honest to talk about Climate Change Skeptics.A lot of these people are right-wing, sometimes exceedingly far to the right. I can't comment on whether there is a conspiracy (legally a conspiracy can involve as few as two people) but it is clear that at least some skeptics are motivated by their philosophical position. Many right-wing climate change skeptics are indeed anti-environmentalists.
But the fact that I despise the politics of some of these people doesn't make them wrong on this issue. It clearly should not change my position on a scientific issue.

Q18. Is this a Secret Plot to Create a Global Government?

If it was a secret plot I would, by definition, not know about it. I shudder to think that the people who can't run America, can't run Russia, can't run China and can't run any other country in the world, would think they could run the world. But, maybe they are megalomaniacs. If so, we don't have a lot to worry about because even the most powerful country in the world, that spends more on the military than all other countries combined, cannot subdue either Iraq or Afghanistan. The chance that a bureaucracy trained in words (usually more resembling smog than a scalpel), not deeds (like the UN), could ruthlessly rule the planet is infinitesimally small.

Q19. Is CO2 a Pollutant?

The claim that CO₂ is a pollutant, recently supported by the EPA, is one of the most damaging aspects of the climate change theory. CO₂ is essential for life and the only way it could be associated with ill health is if there is so much that it displaces the other gases, such as oxygen, that are essential for life. By that definition everything is a pollutant.Traditional pollutants cause cancer, birth defects, mental disorders up to and including paralysis, metabolic disturbances, immune deficiences, skin disorders and so on. CO₂ does none of those things.
To call CO₂ a pollutant is to completely pervert the meaning of the term "pollutant" and eliminates the true horror that true pollutants represent to human and other life forms.

Q20. How can Action to Reduce CO2 Emissions not be Good?

Burying CO₂ securely in the ground (perhaps by reacting it) costs energy. Therefore, to produce the same amount of energy more coal will need to be burned (about thirty percent by this MIT estimate). This would increase the amount of arsenic, mercury, chromium, cadmium and acid rain and only reduce the amount of CO₂.Far more scary are plans to pump particulates into the atmosphere, plans that are being taken seriously. A logical extension of this is that countries that pump huge amounts of particulates in the atmosphere already, such as China, should get credit for the cooling impact of their activities.
Nuclear energy is also being promoted by some advocates of global warming fear, including green guru James Lovelock. This has two well-recognized problems, the risk of a catastrophic accident, like Chernobyl, and the lack of any method to dispose of the reactors (not just the nuclear fuel) after the reactor needs to be taken out of service.

Q21. Won't Environmentalism Benefit?

This singular focus on climate change risks destroying the environmental movement. It removes the focus from local issues if they are not related to CO₂ which reduces the activist base. If climate change is discredited then the organizations associated with it are discredited. Personally I have stopped funding environmental organizations who have climate change as their main focus. This now includes most environmental organizations that I used to donate substantial amounts of money to regularly. When the climate change theory collapses so will many environmental organizations. People may stop taking the warnings of environmentalists seriously even when they are well-grounded in real environmental issues.I have felt my doubts silenced by self-censorship for some time now. The proponents of global warming are so self-assured that it appeared to me that all environmentalists shared this viewpoint except me. But as I started to raise hesitant doubts I was surprised that my concerns were actually shared by many other environmentalists who also felt silenced. I am afraid that this could lead to a big split in the movement as more people come out against this theory realizing that it is irresponsible to stay silent.

Q22. But it has encouraged young people to get engaged

Yes, but they are being encouraged to be engaged with a simplistic, "explains everything", theory. They are being encouraged to demonstrate for virtual remedies, such as carbon trading. They should be demonstrating against real environmental crimes, and demanding real changes like decreasing energy consumption, reforming transportation systems and cracking down on toxic emissions.What would have happened if the demonstrators in Copenhagen had broken into the Bella Center? What could they have done? Produced a piece of paper to be ignored and misinterpreted by governments worldwide?

Q23. What is your scientific background?

I have an HBSc (four year degree) in Botany and Mathematics with a thesis involving complex mathematics and computer programming published in the international journal Taxon in 1981. This led to a career in computer programming and then telecommunications. I am accepted as an expert in telecommunications without a single for-credit course in that subject because I, and colleagues, literally wrote the book on some aspects of cellular communications in the 1990s, developing standards that are still in wide use today.My interests in science include a philosophical interest in the limits of scientific knowledge. When studying biology in university for five years I specialized in Taxonomy, the endeavour of trying to organize organisms according to evolutionary relationships. I realized that, in this field, the more precise the statement about relationships the less likely it is to be true and, at a certain point, the truth will never be known because you cannot go back in time and see what the situation was, say, one million years ago. I also realized that the fundamental unit of this science, the species, cannot be defined in a universal way, but only relative to the type of organism being studied (and even then there are many exceptions). Many taxonomists don't want to face this reality. This gave me a good understanding of this problem in other fields, where you have to live with generous helpings of uncertainty, making certain predictions futile.
My interest in ecology is long-standing, even before winning a science fair prize in 1973 (at the age of 17) for a study of microclimatic changes between forest and nearby cleared power line areas.
Climate science has a different problem than taxonomy or evolutionary biology. It is somewhat easier to go back in time to get data (from ice cores, etc.), but it is no more possible to go forwards in time. Again, the more forceful the statement, the less likely it is to be true, the longer the time period, the more the uncertainty. Evolutionary biologists are usually smart enough to avoid making predictions about the future of organisms that exist today but many climate scientists seem unable to resist the urge.
I work on a regular basis with engineers in a field where firm predictions can sometimes be made. Systems can be arranged so that, in some cases, under the same circumstances, exactly the same event can be repeated any number of times. Although, to be fair, this is surprisingly often not the case, even for fully digital communications systems like the internet. The predictive ability of some complex systems leads some engineers and other similar professionals to misunderstand biological systems that are not amenable to predictions produced from reductionist mathematical models.
I have also extensively studied supposedly infectious diseases, particularly AIDS, reading literally thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers on this subject (and a similar number of other documents), and in 2008 was appointed to lead the main group of scientists who question the HIV=AIDS hypothesis (Rethinking AIDS) – the first leader who was not a professional (i.e. paid) scientist or academic.
My interest in HIV/AIDS has led me to the hypothesis that many so-called infectious diseases actually have environmental causes. It has also led me to understand the dangerous seductiveness of a theory that claims to explain too much and that is so flexible it can bring completely different diseases that arise in completely different circumstances under its wing. Similar to climate change, proponents of the HIV=AIDS=Death dogma often claim that there are no credible scientists who oppose them, defining "credible" to mean someone who supports the establishment theory. Trafficking in circular logic is the main crime these scientists (who ignore the scientific method) share.

Q24. Is the Sea Level Rising?

Verifying whether sea levels are rising at first seems as simple as determining whether temperatures are increasing. But the problems are the same. Where should this be measured? And, how can tiny long term increases be extracted reliably from data that contains much larger short term variation (both sea level and temperature can vary significantly within a few hours) and possibly medium term bias?Sea level is obviously affected by the daily tides which are caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon. Land in many places is rising or falling due to natural or man-made events (such as excessive removal of water).
While many scientists are convinced that there are small increases in sea level already, and catastrophic increases pending, Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner, a highly credentialled scientist, disputes this.

Q25. What About Extreme Cold Events?

The 1990s did appear to be a relatively warm decade but more recently there have been many areas experiencing exceptionally cold winters. The winter of 2009/2010 seems in keeping with this trend. By January China was reporting the coldest winter since 1951 and the pro-global warming newspaper, The Independent, was forced to report in January thatthe UK was experiencing the coldest winter in 30 years. In mide-December, Edmonton, Canada, broke its coldest temperature record with a day reaching down to -46C. Heavy snow caused chaos in Spain in January.

Read More

New Book by Nathan Geffen

Quackery taken to task
by Lesley Odendal
health-e


Nathan Geffen’s book Debunking Delusions reminds us what can go wrong when AIDS denialists are given the time of day. The book also documents clearly how we can fight denialism in a manner that saves lives and respects science. What is clear given the resurgence of AIDS denialist propaganda is that now is not the time to sit back.

As Geffen argues in his book, underlying the Treatment Action Campaign’s success in fighting denialism and quackery was the almost unsung treatment education programme. Knowledge truly is power in this case.



AIDS denialism reached its peak in the public arena in the late nineties and early 2000s when Thabo Mbeki consulted a number of AIDS denialistson his AIDS panel to advise him on AIDS policy. The public believed that the debate was over when Mbeki ‘withdrew’ from the debate, claiming that he never stated that HIV did not cause AIDS and when in 2003 antiretroviral (ARVs) began to be rolled out at a national scale to HIV-infected people. The struggle between the many players, including Mbeki, then Minister of Health Manto Tshablala-Msimang, the Treatment Action Campaign, clinicians, the international scientific community and the many denialists benefiting from, and supporting, Mbeki’s policies such as Duesberg, Anthony Brink, the Visser family and the numerous quacks in tow, received much media attention and mass mobilization.


In 2010, one may ask, what is the significance of AIDS denialism today? For most lay people, the debate is settled and the evidence is clear: HIV causes AIDS; ARVs are the best and only treatment for HIV; Mbeki’s AIDS policies caused thousands of unnecessary deaths and HIV-infections and thousands of peer-reviewed articles have been written regarding the effects of HIV on the body.

Unfortunately, the denialists are not ready to give up. Despite the numerous rebuttals against their claims and the plethora of evidence that exists against them, there has been a recent surge in denialist material that has been circulating both in the mass media in the form of the documentaryHouse of Numbers and the infamous AIDS denialist Peter Deusberg’s (who was also on Mbeki’s panel) article in the non-peer reviewed journal Medical Hypothesis. Medical Hypothesis as not being peer reviewed and scandals around that

AIDS denialists usually support at least one of the following hypothesis:

1. HIV does not exist
2. HIV tests do not in detect the presence of HIV
3. Following from this, HIV prevalence is highly overestimated
4. HIV does exist but it is not harmless
5. HIV is not sexually transmitted
6. AIDS is caused by other factors such as poverty, malnutrition or ARVs themselves
7. ARVs are toxic and often fatal and cannot prevent the vertical transmission of HIV
8. AIDS should be treated by an extensive range of alternative remedies such as herbal concoctions, vegetables, vitamins or bizarre treatments such as ozone rectal therapy

Pride Chigwedere of the Harvard School of Public Health eloquently and passionately refutes many of these claims and the amount of words spent on deconstructing the claims of denialists is unprecedented in academia. However, what is evident and a hallmark of AIDS denialist argument is that despite any proven evidence that is thrown against them, AIDS denialists do not take this into account for developing their arguments and instead sway the debate in another direction. For them, the evidence is incorrect and they are misunderstood as the last renegades of the truth. This makes it very difficult to engage in anti-denialist debates— academics, scientists, activists and clinicians grow tired of arguing with those who do not take reason into account and who do not respect the essential tenant of science— proven evidence—and prefer to focus on their core work which is to create and disseminate more evidence to the benefit of our understanding of HIV. As Nattrass states, “the problem [of not accepting evidence] is far more than intellectual because disregarding evidence not only undermines scientific progress, but it threatens the social basis which makes such progress possible.”

More worrying, is that where the evidence suits them, AIDS denialists misrepresent data or use the incorrect data to support their arguments. In Duesberg’s article for instance, he uses the incorrect epidemiological data that misclassifies causes of death in South Africa to support his thesis that AIDS is not killing as many people as it is widely estimated by scientists across the world. Duesberg uses the Statistics South Africa Findings from Death Notification to argue that AIDS-related deaths are much lower than that postulated by Chigwedere’s 2008 article. However, it is a common fact, that due to AIDS stigma, AIDS is rarely stated as the reason for death. Up to 60% of HIV deaths are misclassified.

Duesberg also refutes the  claim that ARVs are effective at preventing vertical transmission of HIV. He does not quote the numerous randomised control trials that prove that ARVs do decrease the vertical transmission down to between 3 and 5 % when properly administered, but instead examines the history of the production of AZT, one of he drugs used in this prevention strategy.

In the newly aired House of Numbers documentary, denialist views are supported by interviewing respected scientists and distorting their views in a clever concert of manipulation. The public is further shown as erratic sheep who merely carry mainstream HIV because that’s what ‘they’, the scientists said. The definition of HIV and AIDS is painted as unclear with the claim that there is confusion as to what the more than thirty-year old disease, AIDS is. The effectiveness of HIV rapid-tests are questioned in a most irresponsible manner. HIV counsellors in South Africa explain at length what the limitations of rapid testing are and why it is necessary to conduct follow-up testing. At no point is the practical or economic convenience of rapid testing explained, nor is there mention of the gold standard test PCR HIV test which instead of searching for HIV antibodies, identifies HIV DNA in the person’s blood.

The causes of AIDS are debated at length as if the evidence has not been around for decades— HIV as being caused by ‘lifestyle’ drugs and choices such as Poppers, being homosexual, or by co-factors such as poverty and malnutrition. People living with HIV are depicted as highly-emotional sufferers who do not have an option to take life-saving medication and at no point are any people who are managing their lives well on ARVs interviewed. Instead, a baby who was clearly suffering from a very common ARV side effect, plural neuropathy, is depicted as being cured of the ailment once she is off the drug. Other patients are described as having died of hepatoxicity from Nevirapine. At no point is it explained that these side effects are well known and well documented and that every countries ARV guidelines takes these into account in the prescription of ARVs.

Just as Duesberg does, House of Numbers is another example of selective use of evidence. The consequences of this kind of conspiracy theory manipulation of evidence can be far reaching as can be witnessed in South Africa’s tragic AIDS policy of the past. House of Numbers is currently being screened at film festivals around the world. Like all other AIDS denialism, there are dire consequences to this kind of portrayal of evidence.

AIDS denialism allows for deadly consequences. Firstly, it allows people living with HIV an escape— a far too easy route into personal denial that facilitates a process of withholding treatment from oneself and taking the necessary steps to ensure a healthy future. Stemming from this, AIDS denialism allows for quackery in all forms to persist. This allows for unfounded treatments to be sold to people at high costs to cure them of their HIV, as has been tragically witnessed in so many individuals across the world. This is what resulted in the deaths of an immeasurable amount of people across the world, as ARVs are distrusted, as is the institution of scientific evidence. More than quackery, there is a current wave of religious leaders who are encouraging people to stop taking their ARVs as only their faith can heal them.

AIDS denialism, when lent a powerful policy ear, as was the case with the Mbeki administration, allows for the systematic erosion of the scientific governance of medicine. This has far reaching consequences— for example the Medical Control Council (MCC) is practically defunct due to Mbeki’s consistent disregard for scientific evidence. It can result in delaying life-saving treatment to entire nations.

Most importantly, denialism results in death. Unnecessary, painful death. It can be genocide. And it is for that reason that the activists and scientists should not stop fighting AIDS denialism. This should not only be on blogs and in academic journals—most importantly, it should be in the public. HIV Treatment Literacy (TL) is our most powerful tool in this. It is about making science accessible to the masses— even those who do not have any form of education. There are numerous groups who have shown the success of this approach. At any time one can walk into any clinic in Khayelitsha and hear TAC activists, many with no formal education, educating patients about their disease and its treatment. This is the power of TL and anti-denialists strongest weapon in essence given the fact that the denialists themselves are failing to listen.

At the book launch of Debunking Denialism, Andile Madondile, a TAC TL educator, who had indulged in quack remedies for his HIV when his CD 4 was only 9, spoke honestly of the effect that treatment literacy had on him “The comrades at TAC saved my life. They made me realise that ARVs were the only way that I was going to overcome this disease. It is the reason I am alive and well today.”

The denialists appear to be making a comeback. The sad and worrying truth is that they were never gone. The issue at stake here is that due to their easy access to money, resources, publicity, journals which are not peer reviewed and internet, their message will continue to be heard by the masses, who do not necessarily have an understanding of how science works or the myriad of AIDS data. It is this which needs to be stopped in its tracks. Even if governments are clear on the causes and treatment of HIV, at an individual level there is a different story, and this is where our efforts should be targeted. Nathan Geffen’s book Debunking Delusions comes at a time when we need to fight for truth again.


Lesley Odendal is currently completing her Masters in Public Health. She worked at the Treatment Action Campaign in 2008 and 2009.

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Deconstructing David Crowe

Next to Henry Bauer, David Crowe is my favorite AIDS Denialist.

It was, after all, David Crowe who took me under his wing to give me a bird's eye view of AIDS denialism. Crowe and Henry Bauer taught me that AIDS Deniers are sincere when they say that HIV does not cause AIDS. In fact , they don't just say it -  they live it! Crowe and Bauer really believe that HIV is harmless and that HIV tests are invalid.  It is their reality.  Using my nickname, Joe Newton (for obvious reasons), the psychopathology that runs through Denialism was vividly displayed by my AIDS Denialist mentors. AIDS Denialism is no joke...still it is easy to mistake David Crowe the AIDS Denialist for David Crowe the comedian. 

I recently saw David Crowe's (the AIDS Denialist) latest essay. Trying to keep the legacy of former South African Denialist President Thabo Mbeki in our hearts and minds, David Crowe rants that AIDS In Africa is caused by poverty, HIV tests are invalid, the numbers are cooked, blah ......  

I have not read Crowe's essay myself. I tried. I cannot. I am finding it increasingly difficult to read the same old crap spewed by AIDS Denialists, over and over and over again.

That is why I was happy to see that JTD, a frequent commentator on my blog,  takes Crowe to task and debunks his latest rant.

I met JTD at the Harvard Symposium on AIDS Conspiracy Theories and Denialism last October.  That is also where I met Pride Chigwedere, a Harvard researcher that Crowe targets in his latest rant.

Good to see JTD deconstructing David Crowe. Which is sort of like molding wet tissue paper - just a touch and it falls apart.

A fun read well worth checking out.

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Stunning Admission by the NIH: Advances in HIV Treatment have saved countless lives

At a meeting with the (Washington Post) editorial board yesterday, Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, dropped this stunning piece of data on the AIDS epidemic in the United States. In the 1980s, he said, a 21-year-old diagnosed with HIV could expect to live just one year. Today, a 21-year-old who becomes HIV-positive has a life expectancy of 70.

"Pretty remarkable," Dr. Collins said, after noting the impact of anti-retroviral treatments that lower the level of HIV in the blood and boost immune systems. For those whose lives have been saved, it's a miracle.

You can hear more about what he said on AIDS and other topics here: 

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David Rasnick: Recognized by the Scientific Community as a Certified Whack Job

State of denial

By Megan Scudellari

Nature Medicine

16, 248 (2010) 
doi:10.1038/nm0310-248a

Scientists regularly debate hypotheses and interpretations, sometimes feverishly. But in the public sphere, a different type of dissension is spreading through media outlets and online in an unprecedented way-one that challenges basic concepts held as undeniable truths by most researchers. 'Science denialism' is the rejection of the scientific consensus, often in favor of a radical and controversial point of view. Here, we list what we see as a few of today's most vocal denialists spreading ideas that counter the consensus in health fields.

-David Rasnick: A biochemist who studied protease inhibitors in the pharmaceutical industry, Rasnick is the former president of Rethinking AIDS, an activist group that calls for the reappraisal of the 'belief' that HIV causes AIDS. Rasnick was also a member of South African president Thabo Mbeki's AIDS Advisory Panel; as part of the panel, Rasnick argued that AIDS does not exist and suggested that HIV testing be outlawed and antiretroviral drugs no longer used in the country. Although not linking their findings to Rasnick, two studies have independently estimated that more than 330,000 lives were lost in South Africa between 2000 and 2005 because of the delayed use of antiretrovirals (J. Acquir. Immune Defic. Syndr. 49, 410-415, 2008; Afr. Aff. 107, 157-176, 2008).

CORRECTION posted by Nature Medicine (this may be a first. Correcting something crazy with something just as crazy)

In ‘State of Denial’ (Nat. Med. 16, 248 (2010)), we originally stated that David Rasnick denied the existence of AIDS while serving on an advisory panel. Contrary to a report produced by the panel, Rasnick says he did not question the existence of AIDS. Rather, he says that AIDS is not contagious and is not caused by HIV. The text should have read “Rasnick was also a member of South African president Thabo Mbeki’s AIDS Advisory Panel; as part of the panel, Rasnick suggested that HIV testing be outlawed and antiretroviral drugs no longer used in the country.” The error was corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article on 17 March 2010.

-Mark and David Geier: This father-son duo, based in Washington, DC, was among the first to publish claims that the thimerosal preservative used in certain vaccines causes autism (J. Am. Physicians Surg. 8, 6-11, 2003). Mark Geier holds a doctorate in genetics; his son, David, has a bachelor's degree in biology. Together, they promote therapies for autism including chelation, the use of chemicals to remove heavy metals from the body, and Lupron, a drug used to treat prostrate cancer and chemically castrate sex offenders. Mark Geier has testified in support of the thimerosal-autism link as an expert witness at vaccine trials across the US; numerous rigorous studies, however, have dismissed this link.

-Sandy Szwarc: A food editor and writer, Szwarc has rejected the idea that individuals with obesity face a heightened risk of premature death. Szwarc, a registered nurse, calls government antiobesity efforts "a grossly exaggerated and fabricated scare campaign." On her blog "Junkfood Science," Szwarc presents the 'obesity paradox,' which refers to the alleged health benefits associated with obesity, such as reports that obese individuals may have higher survival rates of coronary artery disease than their normal-weight counterparts. Scientists reviewing this data, however, have suggested that this higher survival rate might be due to more aggressive treatment of people with obesity and other factors.

-Wolfgang Wodarg: Wodarg is a German physician and past head of health at the Council of Europe. Wodarg recently made headlines accusing flu drug and vaccine makers of influencing the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare swine flu a pandemic. In a recent interview, Wodarg called the H1N1 outbreak "one of the greatest medical scandals of the century," and he has made a motion that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe begin an immediate investigation into the matter. The WHO has called allegations by people who say that it created a false pandemic as "scientifically wrong" and "irresponsible." The health agency stressed that "[t]he world is going through a real pandemic."

-Michael Fumento: Fumento is a journalist and author of several books, including The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS. He writes regularly about the promise of adult stem cells and the danger of embryonic stem cells on his blog, "Advise and Dissent," and for such outlets as the New York Post and Forbes Online. Fumento claims embryonic stem cell research is both "a dead end," fueled by a greedy lobby, and dangerous, despite evidence from animal studies suggesting its promise. He uses a picture of a tumor with teeth and hair growing from it to illustrate his point.

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Duped by Denialists: Final Verdict on Editor of Medical Hypotheses Part III

 Implement peer review or resign, controversial journal’s editor told

Times Higher Education

10 March 2010

By Zoë Corbyn

Ultimatum spells end for Medical Hypotheses in its current form. Zoë Corbyn reports

The editor of the journal Medical Hypotheses has been given until 15 March either to implement changes to adopt a traditional peer-review system, or to resign.

He has also been told that even if he stays with the journal, his contract will not be renewed at the end of the year.

As Times Higher Education reported in January, publisher Elsevier is attempting to rein in its unorthodox journal, which publishes papers on the basis of how interesting or radical they are rather than using peer review, after it published a paper last July that denied the link between HIV and Aids.

The article prompted an outcry from Aids researchers, leading Elsevier to propose changes to both introduce peer review and exclude papers on certain controversial topics.

But Elsevier’s plans have been vehemently opposed by the journal’s editor, Bruce Charlton, its editorial advisory board and a large number of Medical Hypotheses’ authors, who have mounted a campaign to save the journal, believing it offers an important outlet for radical ideas.

Professor Charlton said: “Elsevier is asking me either to resign immediately, or else immediately to begin implementing changes that it has unilaterally and irrationally demanded. But my conscience will not allow me… I cannot do either of these things.”

The news comes as two controversial papers on the Aids virus that had been retracted from the journal following the outcry are “permanently withdrawn” after they failed to pass the test of peer review.

The papers in question are “HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS: A new perspective” by Peter Duesberg, professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a paper published the same month, “AIDS denialism at the ministry of health” by Marco Ruggiero, professor of molecular biology at the University of Florence.

Both papers are being permanently withdrawn from the scientific record, even though the Ruggiero paper does not deny the link between HIV and Aids, but argues that the Italian Ministry of Health seemed not to believe that HIV is the “sole cause” of the Aids virus.

The papers were both rejected unanimously by five anonymous reviewers in a process managed by The Lancet, another Elsevier journal.

But Professor Charlton said he rejected both the process and outcome of this assessment, and accused Elsevier of running a “show trial” and making a “gross mistake”.

“I do not acknowledge the validity of deleting these papers from the scientific literature,” said the professor of theoretical medicine at the University of Buckingham.

“I do not acknowledge the validity of the Elsevier process of reviewing these papers, nor do I consider the referees’ reports relevant to the criteria I use in selecting papers.”

He added that it was “ludicrous” that the Ruggiero paper, which he said was “the opposite of an HIV denialist paper”, had been bracketed with the Duesberg paper.

He said that “since this gross mistake has not been acknowledged”, the evaluation process had not been rigorous enough.

Professor Ruggiero said he believed his paper was “condemned from the very beginning” of the process, “probably because of the word ‘denialism’ in the title”.

Elsevier declined to comment on the developments, saying it was engaged in a “private discussion” with the editor about the future of the journal.

It has previously said that the Duesberg paper contained opinions “that could potentially be damaging to global public health”.

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Duped by Denialists: Final Verdict on Editor of Medical Hypotheses Part II

Elsevier to Editor: Change Controversial Journal or Resign

Science

by Martin Enserink on March 8, 2010 7:37 PM 

The editor of the journal Medical Hypotheses—an oddity in the world of scientific publishing because it does not practice peer review—is about to lose his job over the publication last summer of a paper that says HIV does not cause AIDS. Publishing powerhouse Elsevier today told editor Bruce Charlton that it won't renew his contract, which expires at the end of 2010, and it asked that Charlton resign immediately or implement a series of changes in his editorial policy, including putting a system of peer review in place. Charlton, who teaches evolutionary psychology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in the United Kingdom, says he will do neither, and some on the editorial advisory board say they may resign in protest if he is fired.

Elsevier's move is the latest in an 8-month battle over the journal; it comes after an anonymous panel convened by Elsevier recommended drastic changes to the journal's course, and five scientists reviewed the controversial paper and unanimously panned it.

Medical Hypotheses, which says it "will consider radical, speculative and non-mainstream scientific ideas provided they are coherently expressed," is the only Elsevier journal not to practice peer review. Scientist, entrepreneur, and author David Horrobin, who founded the journal in 1975, believed reviewers tend to dislike what lies outside the scientific mainstream and thus are reluctant to embrace new ideas, however promising. Charlton, who succeeded Horrobin in 2003, takes the same view: He decides what gets published himself—although he occasionally will consult another scientist—and manuscripts are edited only very lightly. As the journal's Web site explains, "the editor sees his role as a 'chooser', not a 'changer.' "

It's a policy that leads to the occasional wild and wacky paper—a 2009 article for which the author studied his own navel lint became an instant classic—but the journal is also a "unique and excellent" venue for airing new and valuable ideas, says neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran of the University of California (UC), San Diego, who published in the journal 15 times himself and sits on its editorial advisory board. "There are ideas that may seem implausible but which are very important if true," Ramachandran says. "This is the only place you can get them published."

But the journal got in hot water in July when Charlton “chose” a paper, previously rejected by the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, in which molecular virologist Peter Duesberg of UC Berkeley and colleagues assert that HIV does not cause AIDS and that medical statistics and demographical data do not support the existence of a massive AIDS epidemic in South Africa. Duesberg, a so-called "AIDS denialist," has disputed the link between HIV and AIDS since the 1980s; his paper was an attack on a study by Harvard University scientists claiming that more then 300,000 lives were lost because the South African government dragged its feet in the introduction of anti-HIV therapy.

Charlton says he is "agnostic" on the question whether HIV causes AIDS but adds that even papers that are wrong can make interesting points—and that can make the reader rethink his or her own viewpoint. "If he believes that, he should have a great big health warning on every page saying, 'This may be rubbish,' " says Nicoli Nattrass, an economist at the University of Cape Town and the author of another study on the price of AIDS denialism in her country. Nattrass and others say publication in a scientific journal gives Duesberg's paper an undeserved air of respectability and credibility that can harm public health. "This is not just some stupid academic debate," she says. "Many people in South Africa still don't believe HIV causes AIDS because there are scientists who say so. And they are dying because of it."

After the paper's publication, prominent HIV scientists John Moore of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City and Nobelist Françoise Barré-Sinoussi of the Pasteur Institute in Paris wrote Elsevier to ask that the paper be withdrawn. Others asked the National Library of Medicine to delist Medical Hypotheses from MEDLINE, the world's foremost database of biomedical literature, and called on scientists to urge their librarians to cancel the journal. (They also took aim at a second AIDS paper by molecular biologist Marco Ruggiero of the University of Florence, which they say had denialist tendencies as well.)

Following the advice of an external panel whose membership has not been made public, Elsevier wrote Charlton on 22 January to say that Medical Hypotheses would have to become a peer-reviewed journal. Potentially controversial papers should receive especially careful scrutiny, the publisher said, and some topics—including "hypotheses that could be interpreted as supporting racism" should be off limits.

Elsevier also had its flagship medical journal, The Lancet, organize a formal review by five anonymous experts. The reviews, which have not yet been released publicly but were obtained by Science, were unanimously harsh—especially about the Duesberg paper, indicating that it is riddled with errors and misinterpretations. "It might entertain their friends and relatives on a cold winter evening, but it does not belong in a scientific journal," one reviewer wrote. On 24 February, Elsevier wrote Duesberg that his paper—which had not yet been printed and had been taken down from the journal's Web site in August—would be "permanently withdrawn." Ruggiero received a similar letter 5 days later.

Charlton disputes the validity and objectivity of the review—which he calls a "show trial"—and says the publisher had no right to override his editorial decision. He says he has received letters from more than 150 Medical Hypotheses authors who support him, a selection of which he has published on his Weblog.

A majority of the journal's Editorial Advisory Board is behind Charlton as well. On 12 February, 13 of the Board's 19 members wrote Elsevier to demand that the papers be returned to the journal's Web site and to reject the proposed changes to its editorial policies. Not having peer review "is an integral part of our identity, indeed our very raison d'être," the group wrote. That does not mean they're all happy with the paper, says board member David Healy, a professor in psychological medicine at Cardiff University School of Medicine in the United Kingdom. "It's a defense of Bruce, not of the Duesberg paper," he says.

At least one of those on the board strongly disagrees with the majority, however. Antonio Damasio, head of the University of Southern California's Brain and Creativity Institute in Los Angeles, says that the paper should never have been published but acknowledges that he has not kept up with the affair.

Duesberg—who has not published anything on HIV the past decade except for one paper in a journal published by the Indian Academy of Sciences—says Elsevier's measures are the latest example of "censorship" imposed by the "AIDS establishment." But Medical Hypotheses' critics applaud the publisher’s latest step. "It seems clear that Elsevier has come to realize that there is a problem with Medical Hypotheses and that they are doing what they can to rectify it," says Moore.

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Duped by Denialists: Final Verdict on Editor of Medical Hypotheses

Journal Editor Faces Axe
by Jef  Akst
The Scientist
March 8 2010
Elsevier has asked the editor-in-chief of its only non-peer-reviewed journal, Medical Hypotheses, to either resign immediately or implement a series of changes, including a traditional peer-review system.

The journal's editor-in-chief Bruce Charlton told The Scientist that such changes are "vehemently opposed" by the editorial advisory board, as well as at least 150 scientists who have published in the journal. Elsevier has given him until next Monday (March 15) to respond, and he said he is still contemplating his decision.


In addition to instituting a peer-review system, an external advisory board assembled by Elsevier also recommends that articles on controversial subjects, such as any that support racism, not be considered for publication.
Elsevier has also given Charlton notice that his contract will be "terminated" at the end of this year, Charlton said. "My understanding is that Elsevier will indeed appoint a new editor and make the changes while keeping the same title," he explained, a move that he considers "dishonest" and "unethical."


"The editorial advisory board and I agree that we would much rather the title expired altogether, than that an 'anti-Medical Hypotheses' journal continued to trade on its past reputation," Charlton wrote in an email.


Medical Hypotheses has been in hot water since earlier this year, after AIDS researchers complained about an article it ran by AIDS denialist Peter Duesberg. The journal currently aims to publish provocative papers, which are selected by Charlton.

Editor's note: Elsevier responded to The Scientist after the publication of this story acknowledging that it had accepted the external panel's recommendations for the journal. The publisher also clarified that should Charlton stay with the journal for the immediate future, his contract would not be renewed at the end of the year, as opposed to "terminated" before its completion.

comment:

Elsevier's statement

by tom reller

[Comment posted 2010-03-08 12:50:09]

The following is the statement Elsevier sent to The Scientist.

Elsevier regrets that Professor Charlton declined each of our offers to discuss the Journal?s future with him. We have sought his input on more than a few occasions; he has not yet chosen to engage in discussion. We would still welcome his choice to work for the Journal through the remainder of the year if he desires. At some point, though, we need to make a decision, which is what prompted our most recent letter.

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