Mbeki’s mystery panel

It’s official: President Thabo Mbeki’s Aids panel is still very much in existence.

But who its current members are, how much money the whole exercise has cost to date, what research it is still conducting, and when its cryptic work will be finalised remain a mystery.

Media reports during the past week have expressed confusion about the panel’s existence, but presidential spokesperson Bheki Khumalo told the Mail & Guardian that the panel has not been disbanded.

‘I am fully briefed by the president and the panel is still in existence,” he said. But he refused to get ‘involved in the details” of how much money has been spent on research and on setting up and maintaining the panel.

‘At the right time they [the scientists] will convene [a] meeting [of the panel],” he said.

He did not want to comment on what the scientists are researching or how long it will be before they reveal their findings.

‘I will not involve myself in the details you want.”

He said he ‘supposed” the members of the panel should know that the panel is still in existence.

He said he did not have a list of current members and referred the query to the Department of Health. The department did not respond to the M&G‘s requests on Thursday to return its calls.

The panel was set up at the height of Mbeki’s dissident era, when he openly — and internationally — questioned whether HIV causes Aids.

Since 2001 he has been mum on the issue, but speculation about delays in the anti-retroviral roll-out have centred on the president’s unconventional views on the virus.

At the time, the formation of the panel caused fury: it was seen as a waste of time and money to attempt to answer a question most people considered settled.

But for the first time dissidents and mainstream scientists sat in a room together to discuss whether HIV causes Aids.

The first meeting of the panel was held in May 2000, when 32 scientists stayed at the Sheraton hotel in Pretoria for two-and-a-half days.

Scientists attending the meeting said that it was videotaped for the president’s perusal.

Some members of the panel compiled a 134-page report which concluded that there was no consensus between the mainstream scientists and the dissidents, but that there was an understanding that epidemiological studies would be undertaken to prove or disprove once and for all that HIV causes Aids.

The South African coordinator of the panel, Professor Sam Mhlongo, head of the department of family medicine and primary health care at the Medical University of Southern Africa, said a synthesis of the report of the deliberations of the panel was available on the government website from March 2001 to June 2002.

‘My information with regard to the experiment, which was begun a year ago by Dr Harvey Bialy and Dr Roberto Stock [both of Mexico], is that their work is not complete,” he said.

‘It would be unusual to announce the results of such work, which in my view is still in its infancy. Both Dr Bialy and Dr Roberto Stock will be continuing this particular experiment at some time during the course of this year.”

Further mystery surrounds how many experiments are under way, whether the funding for research is given only to the dissident scientists, and how long will it take before the findings are released.

Khumalo said the researchers will inform the president when the experiments are complete.

Mhlongo declined to comment on the funding, saying: ‘It is the prerogative of the South African Cabinet and president.”

The handful of mainstream South African scientists originally on the panel seem to be out of the loop, but that may be due to their decision not to participate in Internet discussions of the panel after the second meeting, in June 2000.

‘We left the meeting with no conclusion,” said a member of the panel, Salim Abdool Karim, deputy vice-chancellor for research at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and director of the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa.

‘We never received a letter disbanding the panel and [the passing of] time became the closure: it has been four years.”

He could not comment on what research wss being conducted, but speculated that it could be on HIV testing.

‘A good proportion of our time was spent on discussing the accuracy of HIV tests.”

He said he was unaware of funding for follow-up research being allocated to any of the South African mainstream scientists.

Nor could he comment on whether the mainstream scientists would participate in future meetings.

‘We will have to make a decision as a group,” he said. But he said that if it was up to him, he would not like to participate.

The M&G‘s attempts to contact outspoken dissidents Bialy, of the Autonomous National University of Mexico, and American scientist David Rasnick were unsuccessful.