The Forum for Debating Aids in South Africa responds to ‘All the president’s scientists diary of a round-earther’
On September 8 2000 the Mail & Guardian published an article entitled, “All the president’s scientists diary of a round-earther”. On December 14 2000 the Appeal Panel of the Press Ombudsman decided in favour of a complaint filed by The Forum for Debating Aids in South Africa (FDASA), stating that the M&G was in breach of Section 3.3 of the Press Code of Conduct: “Comment by the press shall be an honest expression of opinion and shall take fair account of all available facts which are material to the matter commented upon.” This decision overturned the prior decision of its own ombudsman. We are required to carry the following article by decision of the Appeal Panel:
In covering Aids, we believe that the M&G has been misled by interests that do not want a true debate on the issue or by persons who are themselves misled. The fact that American and South African government members of President Thabo Mbeki’s Aids panel agreed to collaborate on tests with Aids dissidents demonstrates that even the United States government can have an open mind in the Aids debate. This is also an indication that the proponents of the HIV hypothesis had not already proven their case during the sessions. The dogmatic September 8 2000 article is a kind of suppression that only encourages the number of Aids dissidents to grow, even if they are wrong. However, real scientific debate will either reduce their distraction if they are wrong or correct the course of science if they are right. Thus, Aids victims win either way.
FDASA has organised the first real scientific Aids debate between an orthodox American Aids scientist and a dissident German Aids doctor who is a member of the president’s Aids panel. They were selected because we believe that both of them are sincerely interested in the truth, even though they disagree. The debate is structured in a way that can find the real truth without a dogmatic bias for either side. The debate will begin on the Internet at http://news-gap.com onMonday and will last for six weeks.
One of the participants, Dr Claus Koehnlein, has written the following, which was also discussed during the presidential Aids panel meetings:
“Since 1993, I treat HIV-positive people according to their specific illness. That means I treat them irrespective of their HIV status. Meanwhile I have 32 patients who have one thing in common: they all declined anti-retroviral treatment although they were urgently advised to take it. One third of them are longer than 10 years HIV-positive. Their friends who have taken the recommended treatments are all dead. There is not one survivor. The so-called therapeutic success which is claimed by the orthodoxy because of declining mortality is a euphemism for less toxic treatment because we reduced the dosage of immuno-suppressive drugs.”
Dr Brian Thomas Foley of the US Government’s Los Alamos National Laboratory will attempt to explain Dr Koehnlein’s patients’ experience within the context of established Aids science.