OWN CORRESPONDENT and REUTERS, Johannesburg | Monday
SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki has restoked the ongoing controversy over Aids in an interview with US-based news magazine Time, in which he reiterates that he believes HIV is not the only cause of the disease.
“No, I am saying that you cannot attribute immune deficiency solely and exclusively to a virus,” Mbeki said in response to a question whether he was prepared to acknowledge there was a link between the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (Aids).
Mbeki first incurred the wrath of the world’s Aids experts in July during an international conference attended by 12 000 delegates when he failed to acknowledge the link between HIV and Aids.
Mbeki said in the interview published on Time’s Web site (www.time.com) that factors like poverty, poor nutrition, contaminated water and other diseases including sexually transmitted diseases contributed to immune deficiency.
“Now it is perfectly possible that among those things is a particular virus. But the notion that immune deficiency is only acquired from a single virus cannot be sustained,” he said.
“The problem is that once you say immune deficiency is acquired from that virus your response will be anti-retroviral drugs,” he added.
Mbeki also defended his decision to appoint so-called “Aids dissidents” who doubt HIV exists or destroys the human immune system to an advisory panel, saying it would help clear up the question of what really caused Aids.
The majority of scientists and doctors around the world say HIV causes Aids, which has infected 35 million people and has already killed almost 19 million. Some 4.2 million South Africans out of a population of 43 million have been killed in the epidemic, which is on course to infect a total of nearly eight million more by the end of the decade.