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Canada supports agency criticised as an "AIDS denier"

Quebec David Spurgeon

A Canadian agency that has been supported financially by the Canadian government has come under strong criticism for being an "AIDS denier." The agency carries claims on its website that HIV is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause AIDS and that the number of AIDS cases worldwide has been manipulated and is really decreasing rather than increasing.

The views on the website of InterPares (www.interpares.ca), a non-governmental agency, run counter to those stated on the Canadian federal health department’s own website (www.hc-sc.gc.ca).

InterPares describes itself as supporting "social justice work" in more than 20 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In 2002, it received $C5m (£2.2m; $3.8m; €3.2m) from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Dr Mark Wainberg, director of the AIDS Centre at McGill University, Montreal, and formerly president of the International AIDS Society, called the organisation "just the latest in a series of AIDS deniers." He said, "It is shameful and alarming that the Canadian government would provide financial support to an organisation that is acting at counter-purposes to the stated position of the government itself."

Rosemary Forbes, programme officer with the Inter-Agency Coalition on AIDS and Development in Ottawa, said that although InterPares was a well respected organisation Canada’s HIV and AIDS development community has been concerned for a long time about the content of the articles on the InterPares website and the organisation’s general approach to AIDS.

Molly Kane, the executive director of InterPares, denied the charges: "We’re funded by CIDA [the Canadian International Development Agency], but we don’t represent the government. We don’t say that HIV does not cause AIDS."

Describing one of the website articles, entitled "Uncommon Questions: A Feminist Explanation of AIDS," Ms Kane said, "It doesn’t say that HIV does not cause AIDS. It says that it’s a co-factor: that’s a different argument."

The article says: "It is the theoretical premise that the cause of AIDS is primarily viral, together with the social-sexual theories about the spread of AIDS, that leads to a prediction of an epidemic, not the observable facts . . . The facts simply do not back up the theory."

It continues: "There is serious debate about the positive and negative impact of AZT [zidovudine] and the so-called ‘drug cocktails,’ with many critics challenging the claims of their effectiveness in preventing the onset of disease in HIV-positive people."

It continues: "In hard numbers, relatively few women are diagnosed with AIDS . . . AIDS statistics are often manipulated to give the illusion of an increase in AIDS cases, when there has actually been a decrease."

The agency’s claims are in direct contrast to those of the World Health Organization and most other international health agencies. On 25 November WHO said: "The global AIDS epidemic shows no signs of abating. Five million people became infected with HIV worldwide and three million died this year alone—the highest ever.

"One in five adults across southern Africa are now living with HIV/AIDS, the highest rate since the beginning of the epidemic. The epidemic is particularly devastating for women in sub-Saharan Africa, where more women are likely to be infected with HIV than men. Among young people this discrepancy is particularly high with young women aged 15-24 up to 2.5 times more likely to be infected than young men in the same age group."

Recently Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS (the joint UN programme on HIV and AIDS), said antiretroviral treatment has reduced mortality in Brazil by 80%. In a WHO news release he said, "Widespread treatment access would substantially mitigate the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS."

An article on the Interpares website, "The Politics of AIDS" by Brian Murphy, says that medical science "has got it wrong" about HIV and AIDS. "HIV has been demonstrated to be of itself neither necessary nor sufficient to cause AIDS," it says.

Ms Kane said that AIDS was not a focus of the agency’s work, and that InterPares was not the publisher of the articles in question. Although Mr Murphy was a member of the organisation’s staff, his article was written by him as an individual, she said.
 
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