GayMensHealthSummit@yahoogroups.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gaymenshealthsummit

"DENY" the existence of HIV and AIDS, but as a citizen and person, how
should we worry about that???? THINK I want some answers here.  THANKS

  I won't pretend to fully understand the motivations or driving
forces but personally I was disheartened when a group in San Francisco
was doing terrorist-like actions against AIDS support groups and town
meetings. Imagine going to a town meeting and having a group barge in
and throw pills and scream - very unproductive. I believe it was a
treatment update meeting and nothing too revolutionary. Following that
security guards were paid for and security dampened the free exchange
of ideas and protocol. The work continued but without more grassroots
input which is probably not the best thing.

 That same group has morphed now to selling medical marijuana and has
gotten into a bit of hot water for financing some more radical members
of animal liberation groups. Maybe the pot has mellowed them out.

=-=-=-=-

 Here is a brief from six years ago, search "AIDS Denialists" for
more info

AIDS Denialists: How to Respond

AIDS TREATMENT NEWS Issue #342, May 5, 2000
John S. James
For over ten years self-styled "AIDS dissidents" have said that HIV
does not cause AIDS, that AIDS is not a contagious disease, that HIV
is a harmless retrovirus (some say, instead, that HIV does not exist),
that AIDS treatments are poisons which themselves cause the disease,
and that the AIDS epidemic is a huge medical fraud promoted by corrupt
pharmaceutical companies, scientists, and doctors. This movement has
learned to appeal to very different agendas; and along with heavy
doses of misinformation it weaves some accurate facts and emotional,
social, and political truths. It has hidden funding, celebrity
endorsements, and corporate journalists who can get its views
publicized in mass media as news. It does not conduct medical research
nor take care of patients, but has more than a decade of experience in
learning how to debate and look credible.

Our concern is not the ideas--we agree that all sorts of ideas should
be explored and debated--but rather the direct translation of casual
speculation and debating points into the medical care of patients with
life-threatening illness, which is strongly encouraged by many of the
"dissidents."

In the U.S., where AIDS treatments usually have been accessible to
patients who need them, this movement has made noise for many years,
but has found only a tiny constituency of believers who will put their
lives at risk by rejecting all medical advice in favor of the rhetoric
and debate. But recently it has been revitalized by tapping into other
agendas in developing countries, where people have been told that they
are going to die and have no chance of treatment, because the drugs
have been priced far beyond their reach (by U.S. and international
government policies to protect the interests of major corporations, as
well as by corporate greed). The "dissidents" (we believe a better
term is "AIDS denialists") have found a new audience among leaders and
publics who are understandingly suspicious of a Western- dominated,
heavily corporate mainstream which pursues its own profit above all
else, and offers millions of people around the world nothing but death.

These issues will be prominent in the next few weeks, through the XIII
International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, July 9-14,
2000. This conference, by far the largest in the world, happens only
once every two years; this is the first meeting in a developing
country. And South Africa is the only country in the world where the
AIDS denialists have ever been recognized by a head of state (see
"South Africa 'AIDS Dissident' Dispute: Time to Stop and Think," AIDS
TREATMENT NEWS #340, April 7, 2000).

How to Answer

For years most AIDS doctors and scientists have seen the denialists as
a lunatic fringe best ignored in hopes that it would go away. They did
not want to bring it more attention, or spend their time rehashing
issues that were settled years ago in the scientific community. And
few of them were prepared for this debate--for while they have spent
their time treating patients or conducting medical research, the other
side has spent years doing nothing but debating, learning what goes
over and what does not in various forums, and learning how to use the
Internet, where anything can be made to look credible.

Many now agree that refusing to answer is a mistake. AIDS
professionals and activists often forget that the world looks
different to people who do not have the same access they do.

We have had long conversations with sincere, intelligent people,
including patients and journalists, who had clearly been influenced by
the denialists and who told us that we were the first person they had
ever found who would talk to them to defend the "mainstream" view.
Their doctors would not discuss it, nor would any researchers they
asked. Most people do not have the background or training to judge a
technical scientific argument themselves; instead, they look at how
they are being treated. When one side will not give them the time of
day on the issue while the other is always available, they may believe
those they can talk to, without hearing any other view.

While some researchers and activists have answered the denialists (for
Web links, see http://www.niaid.nih.gov/spotlight/hiv00/default.htm),
it has long been difficult for patients to find understandable and
effective written answers to some of their claims.

So if one does answer the denialists' arguments, what form should the
answers take? We have discussed this with a number of activists, and
there is clearly an emerging consensus:

(1) The denialist position consists of about 5 to 10 major points
(depending on how you count them--we list 7 below), which are repeated
again and again. Each must be addressed separately, with separate
flyers or brochures which healthcare and service professionals can
give to clients to address their individual concerns.

(2) The back-and-forth debate format is not especially useful here,
because it tends to turn on technical points, asking readers to make
their own decisions on the scientific merits of the issue, which most
people are not prepared to do. A better format is to explain what the
denialists are saying, then show with two or three examples that their
arguments are not credible--that the assertions on which they ask
others to base life-and-death decisions usually leave out far more
compelling information than they include.

Most importantly, we need to explain what is really going on in
treatment and research--the human story as well as the
medical/scientific one, a reality more interesting than the
stick-figure ideologies of the denialists. Here we should avoid the
argumentative style of trying to score points against the other side.
Instead, follow the truth wherever it may lead; when there is truth in
the denialist case, by all means acknowledge it.

(3) Eventually we will need an in-depth, well-referenced document
explaining the issues to healthcare and AIDS service professionals,
and also to patients and anyone else who wants this detailed
information. (For an example of what part of this document might look
like, see the article by Bruce Mirken which we published in our last
issue, "Answering the AIDS Denialists: CD4 (T-Cell) Counts, and Viral
Load," AIDS TREATMENT NEWS #341, April 21, 2000. This article
addresses one of the seven or so major denialist assertions, which we
list below. The other six articles still need to be written.)

(4) From this in-depth document can come the flyers, brochures,
videos, Web sites, and other media.

Seven Deadly Deceptions

Here is our list of the major denialist arguments. As noted above, the
problem is not unorthodox ideas, but their immediate translation into
personal medical advice, usually to tell patients to reject all
medical care for HIV or AIDS, as well as suggesting that safer sex and
other infection- control precautions can be ignored. So for each of
the seven points, we include the corresponding action item. We are
continually amazed at how casually sheer speculation gets translated
into life-and-death decisions.

* HIV is harmless (or does not exist), and AIDS is not contagious--so
sexual and other precautions are unnecessary.

* The HIV test is unreliable--so don't get tested.

* AIDS drugs are poisons, pushed by doctors corrupted by the
pharmaceutical industry--so don't take any of them, no matter what
your doctor says--or don't go to a doctor at all, especially if you
feel well.

* Viral load and CD4 tests are useless--so don't use them.

* AIDS deaths would have gone down anyway, even without new
treatments--so you don't need medical care.

* AIDS is over, or never existed, or only affected small risk
groups--so there is no important need for medical research on AIDS or
HIV, or for AIDS services.

* The free speech of dissenters has been suppressed--so you can't
believe anything you hear.

Note: We omitted the idea that AIDS was created in a government
laboratory to kill African Americans, gay people, or others. This
conspiracy theory is widespread in some communities, but usually does
not urge people to reject medical care, or safer sex or other
precautions against infection.

Note on "Denialists" vs. "Dissidents"

Some of these medical ideologists are upset with the term "AIDS
denialists"; they prefer "AIDS dissidents," which suggests parallels
with such historic examples as anti- totalitarian dissidents, or Galileo.

We use "denialists" because it is more specific and descriptive. There
can be many kinds of AIDS dissent. But the denialists regularly deny
that precautions against infection are necessary, deny that HIV
testing is appropriate, deny that any approved treatments should be
used (or CD4 or viral load tests to monitor disease progression), deny
that treatment saves lives, and often deny that AIDS is a real
epidemic, or even a real medical condition.

The problem is not ideas, but the organized efforts to practice
bizarre medicine, telling people with a major illness to reject care
entirely. Denialists have convinced pregnant women or mothers of
HIV-positive children to reject treatment universally recommended by
their doctors--then harvested publicity from court cases which result.
In the U.S. and other countries where treatment is available, they
have found few who will sacrifice their own lives; but now they are
going to South Africa and elsewhere in the developing world, seeking
to deny medical care to people who will have little or no voice in the
decision, while also impeding public-health campaigns to slow the
spread of HIV infection.

The issue here is not freedom to express ideas; no one is stopping
that. The issue is destructiveness by a handful of professional or
semi-professional denialists whose ideas and behavior have failed to
win them the respect they want.

The AIDS denialist movement will be remembered if it can do serious
damage to worldwide efforts to control the pandemic. Otherwise it will
be largely forgotten, like similar movements during other epidemics in
the past.

GayMensHealthSummit@yahoogroups.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gaymenshealthsummit