JAN HENNOP, Johannesburg | Friday
AN interim report by a controversial Aids advisory panel to the South African government shows little more than a predictable chasm between dissidents and orthodox scientists, say analysts.
The orthodox scientists called for better blood screening and improved awareness campaigns, the dissidents for such treatment as Chinese cucumber, yoga, and music therapy.
The long-awaited document drew criticism from Aids activists and opposition parties because it failed to resolve any of the controversies that led to the panel’s formation.
Set up by President Thabo Mbeki amid criticism of his handling of the HIV/Aids issue last year, the international panel – divided evenly between dissident and conventional scientists – failed to reach consensus on whether HIV causes Aids and the use of anti-retroviral drugs.
The report recommended a series of experiments and further research in South Africa, where some 4.7 million people – one in nine of the population – were HIV-positive at the end of 2000, according to government figures.
In the report’s 134 pages, the dissidents propose that the South African government should consider treatments of ginseng, Chinese cucumber and garlic to boost the immune system.
They said it should also encourage detoxification through such interventions as massage therapy, music therapy, yoga, spiritual care and light therapy.
The conventional scientists called for improved public awareness of safer sex practices, including condom use, and improved screening methods for infected blood.
But Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said the panel’s debates had not prompted the government to abandon its current strategies, based on the premise that HIV does cause Aids.
“While the division among panelists on the cause of HIV/Aids was fundemental, certain commonly held views did emerge on the importance of various programmatic interventions,” she said.
A leading Aids researcher in South Africa said he was upbeat about the government’s stance that HIV did in fact cause Aids.
But Hoosen Coovadia, a professor at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine at Durban’s University of Natal, voiced his concern about statements by dissident panelists, who argued among others that donated blood should not be screened for HIV.
One of the dissidents, American David Rasnick, declared that: “Aids would disappear instantaneously if all HIV testing were outlawed.”
Aids pressure group, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), severely criticised the report, saying the R2.5m was a waste of time, money, effort and resources.
Mark Heywood, who heads South Africa’s Aids Law Project, agreed the report had “achieved nothing and could even harm the fight against the disease”. – AFP
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