S. Africa report blasts AIDS science Ruling party document questions
established theories AIDS sufferer Nomathemba, who has no access to
AIDS medication, plays inside a plastic jungle gym at the Sparrows
Rainsbow Village, a village for the terminally ill, in Roodepoort, South
Africa, on Sunday.
It calls on South Africans not to be "bribed or
intimidated" by drug companies who mistakenly believe the nation's
people can be "bought and terrorized."
It also condemned accepted truths about the disease as
simple extensions of the racist stereotype of Africans as "immoral,
diseased and sexually depraved animals."
SABA NOTE: Tell me are they still slaughtering White Farmers in South
Africa - let them come to Georgia Crematorium and see what fine
upstanding citizens we have down there - why one made Chairman of
Democrat Party......understand might be in the Used Body Part business -
bit Tri State Level connections.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, March 22 — The ruling African National
Congress has given its top officials a document that questions the
existence of AIDS, condemns AIDS drugs as poisonous and describes
Western attitudes to the pandemic in Africa as blatant racism.
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THE DOCUMENT, obtained Friday by The Associated Press,
was a collective effort by several high-ranking ANC officials and was
distributed by the party to members of its National Executive Council at
a meeting last weekend to discuss the government's AIDS policy,
according to Peter Mokaba, an ANC parliamentarian and member of the
council.
Mokaba defended the document as "information sharing in
the ANC."
"It brings together all the elements, so to speak, of
this debate," he said. "Science says all of those things that are quoted
in there."
CONFUSING MESSAGE
Dr. Saadiq Kariem, the party's second-ranking official on
health policy, called the document "ludicrous" and worried it could
confuse South Africans about how to prevent the spread of HIV.
South Africa, with an estimated 4.7 million people
infected with HIV, has come under a hail of international criticism for
its perceived lackadaisical efforts to fight the pandemic.
It has resisted starting a widespread program to give the
AIDS drug nevirapine to infected pregnant mothers to prevent the spread
of HIV to their babies during labor.
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It has ruled out providing anti-retroviral AIDS medicine
through the public health system, emphasizing the side effects of the
medicine.
President Thabo Mbeki also has sought the counsel of
dissident AIDS theorists, whose widely condemned ideas about the disease
are presented prominently in the ANC document.
Mbeki's spokesman Bheki Khumalo did not return a call
seeking comment.
The document questioned the "scientific story that is
told about the HIV/AIDS pandemic." The 114-page thesis intersperses
quotes from news stories, dissident theorists and mainstream scientists
with conclusions from the authors.
The document, which repeatedly condemns the "omnipotent
apparatus" that enforces mainstream belief of AIDS, claims no one has
ever isolated the AIDS virus, HIV tests are absolutely ineffective and
AIDS drugs are poisonous.
Africans are "the latest victim of scare mongering" about
AIDS, the document says.
REPORT CONDEMNS DRUG MAKERS
It calls on South Africans not to be "bribed or
intimidated" by drug companies who mistakenly believe the nation's
people can be "bought and terrorized."
It also condemned accepted truths about the disease as
simple extensions of the racist stereotype of Africans as "immoral,
diseased and sexually depraved animals."
The real problem in Africa is poverty, the document
says. The West was using AIDS to ignore its costly responsibility to
help the continent's development. Instead, the West was offering far
cheaper condoms and drugs.
In addition to the ANC leadership, the document was also
given to leaders of the South African Communist Party and the Congress
of South African Trade Unions, the ANC's partners in the government,
Mokaba said.
AIDS drug pulled from U.S. review
Kariem, the ANC's health secretary, said the paper's
questions about the link between HIV and AIDS and the virus'
transmission through heterosexual sex fly in the face of reams of
scientific studies.
"I can't imagine anything more farfetched than that," he
said.
He worried how doctors across the country would be able
to convince hesitant patients to wear condoms during sex in light of the
document's claims and he questioned why his party distributed it.
"It's irresponsible for senior leaders of the ANC to be
putting out documents of this nature. It sends out a confused message,"
he said. "In the end of the day the ANC will be the laughingstock of the
world."
The document also attacks the integrity of the
quasi-governmental Medical Research Council, saying the body has
ascribed to "the faith about HIV/AIDS" in order to help pharmaceutical
companies sell drugs.
Mokaba defended the document, saying it was important to
see both sides of the AIDS debate.
"We cannot be stampeded into any one position by people
whose interest is merely to sell anti-retrovirals" and who do not have
the welfare of South Africans at heart, he said.
© 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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