<p>Fascinating and very tragic story in this week’s New Yorker, concerning the AIDS epidemic in South Africa, and the lack of effective treatment because of the fact that their President and some other leaders have bought into a dissident movement which states that HIV does not cause AIDS, and that our standard Western anti-retroviral treatments are harmful, not healthful.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the entire article is not on-line, but here is their posted summary:</p>
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<p>It’s a mesmerizing though horribly sad story, as people who should know better decide to stick to a conspiracy theory rather than accept that the broad consensus is backed by truth. Unfortunately, in this day and age, internet “authenticity” can make it sound like there is a debate where there really isn’t one. So, in the article, one reads quotes from reasonable sounding arguments which maintain that everyone claiming the truth of the HIV thesis is just in it for the money, that there are more reasonable causes of AIDS (everything from bad lifestyles to dirty water to lack of vitamins) and that the scientific method is over-rated.</p>
<p>As I read it, I wonder how this kind of thinking develops, why people seem so quick to spit in the face of reasoned science, and develop elaborate conspiracy theories to account for a supposed consensus–because that consensus doesn’t jive with what they choose to believe.</p>
<p>Because, of course, it’s not just the leaders of one country in Africa who take this path; we hear this kind of thinking every day in all sorts of forms.</p>
<p>But meanwhile, while I muse, thousands, perhaps millions, of people are dying while their government counsels them away from the steps they could take to stem the spread of the disease and stay healthier.</p>
<p>Duesberg has an enormous amount of blood on his hands. Back in the mid-80s, when I was in grad school, Duesberg was a respected scientist who was pushing his unorthodox theory even back then. At about the same time, there was another guy, Stanley Prusiner, who was pushing another unorthodox theory - that mad cow, scrapie, and other “slow virus” diseases as they were then called really weren’t caused by viruses at all but a new thing consisting solely of protein that he called “prions.”</p>
<p>The mainstream consensus was that both guys had taken leave of their senses. But from there science, in its self-correcting way, went about sorting out these two free-thinkers and their respective theories. Other scientists set about replicating their work and proving or disproving their theories. It all came down to the data. The data began to build in support of Prusiner’s theory but against Duesberg’s. The result 20 years later: Prusiner is a Nobel laureate and Duesberg is a flaming crackpot who doggedly still flogs to his failed theory to anyone who will listen and kills people because of it.</p>
<p>The mainstream isn’t always right. Sometimes the goofy theory is the correct one. But it all comes out in the end thanks to the data. The data long ago stacked up against Duesberg. Too bad he is too stubborn and/or too daffy to admit that.</p>
<p>And this is the beauty of science–it goes where the evidence leads, not where the experimenter wishes it would go. Duesberg has stopped looking at the evidence, even as it piles up and is borne out by real events.</p>
<p>Whereas, in the case of ulcers, or Atkins diet, to refer to your other post, continued study was always the way each was explored (Wikipedia has a good entry which lists all the inquiries which have been made into the subject of Atkins by medical/nutrition researchers.)</p>
<p>An equivalent situation, I believe, would be global warming, where, though most researchers who were initially skeptic have now been swayed by the continuing preponderance of evidence, some, like Lindzen, are staking out their space by continuing to deny, at whatever the cost. And that denial by a “respected” researcher (Lindzen or Duesberg) fuels the Internet “debate” slash “conspiracy theory” mindset we see demonstrated so often.</p>
<p>Scientists aspire to a higher form of truth, but they are also human and hence are sometimes given to jealousies and rivalries, irrational opinions, grudges, and plain old fashioned wrong thinking.</p>
<p>There is a saying in science: “Wrong theories never die but the scientists who hold them do.” Thus in the larger scheme of things, Duesberg and Lindzen will be gone soon enough. One can only hope they don’t do too much damage on the way out.</p>
<p>Actually, it’s long been suspected to be both. The puzzling thing has always been that heart attacks seem to have been very rare prior to about 1900, no matter what the people ate. Then in 20th century the heart attack incidence sky-rocketed. This suggests that we have gotten better at diagnosing them, which we have, but it also raises the possiblity of some infectious agent that swept in, possibly a virus. But <em>which</em> virus has never been identified.</p>
<p>So this “new” theory is that an infectious agent of some sort causes some manner of change in the lining of the arteries making them much suseceptible to plaque formation. The Twinkies, i.e. high fat diet, trans fats, high LDL cholesterol, plus smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure, and various inflammatory processes are all risk factors that promote the plaque formation once the infectious agent has opened the door.</p>
<p>It’s an exciting new theory. And if there is a breakthrough in identification and treatment of the proposed infectious agent, we could go back to the pre-1900 heart attack levels. But it will all come too late for most of us. Might help our grandchildren though.</p>
<p>^^Could be a contributing factor but it can’t explain the whole phenomenon. In the 20th century it became common for men to have heart attacks in their 40s and 50s. There were plenty of people who made it into their 40s or 50s back in the 18th and 19th centuries.</p>
<p>If heart attacks had been common in the past, the people who I think would have noticed them were the ancient Greeks. Those physicians were very astute observers and diagnosticians. We can almost always recognize which modern diseases they dealt with by their descriptions of the symptoms. But they never really described very much of anything that we would recognize as a heart attack.</p>
<p>Another disease that may have an unknown infectious agent at the root of it is rheumatoid arthritis. It popped up out of nowhere in the 17th century. By contrast, osteoarthritis goes at least as far back as the Neandertals, but there is no evidence (neither literary evidence nor skeletal lesions) for the existence of RA prior to about the year 1600.</p>
<p>I know it’s a shame but there seems to be a long history of this sort of response by African leaders to critical issues. I recall at one point thousands of tons of grain from the U.S. stood in warehouses in one country of starving African people because the leaders of that country feared it was genetically modified grain. There seems an absolute refusal to consider anything which smacks of Western culture. I wonder if another aggenda is in play. By not treating the illness an entire population of one group, be it tribe or religious group or another enemy, may be eliminated and then to the victor goes the spoils. It’s so sad.
Another thing to consider is the demographics of Africa.It is interesting to look at demographic charts of the continent. It is densly poplulated, in rapid growth, and without a means to agriculturally sustain it’s growing population. It has to learn to sustain itself and contues to cling to old not profitable ways.It’s so backwards.And it doesn’t look like anything will change this century, either.</p>
<p>BHG–I think the situation in Africa is far more complex than you explain. The agricultural issues largely exist in the Southern Saharan area largely due to recent environmental changes. Most other hunger and health problems are political, and the situations are born of the tragic history of abuse of the continent by outsiders, leaving a difficult legacy. I’m not downplaying the horror caused by Mbeke’s stance, but he is being led on by scientists like Duesberg, plus he is reacting out of a knowledge of how the people of his country were oppressed by outsiders by centuries. And AIDS does not respect socalled “tribal” differences. It is ubiquitous in S. Africa. I don’t see any evidence of that agenda you suggest. I think it’s much more complex than you portray.</p>
<p>Not to mention that our own president has a tendency to ignore science he doesn’t like.</p>