LETTER FROM SOUTH AFRICA
Events of the past two weeks combined to put the AIDS debate back into the headlines and provided an opportunity to assess progress. I am happy to report that since my entry into the debate in 1999, I have not been more optimistic the war is being won. This relates not to the world situation, where government idiocy still reigns, but to my country, where there are now clear signals of a new direction in AIDS business.

I recently spent two days at a World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) conference called Gender, Child Survival and HIV/AIDS: From Evidence to Policy. The most unique feature of this event at York University in Toronto, Canada was the presence of people from both ends of the spectrum, from outright AIDS rethinkers like myself through to major mainstream researchers.

One thing that has been notable in the AIDS debate is the way headlines have with hindsight been an epitaph. An editorial in the latest issue of The Lancet may be one of these: "South Africa needs an HIV truth and reconciliation commission.”

Journalist Celia Farber's article "Out of Control: AIDS and the corruption of medical science," in the March issue of Harper's magazine, is creating a lovely stir. Let's hope that fairness, accuracy and balance prevail. Lickety-split, there was a rebuttal of the Farber piece by no less than Robert Gallo, MD, John P. Moore, PhD, et al, listing 16 misleading statements, 25 false statements, 10 unfair statements and five indicating bias. It's being circulated via the Internet as a "draft for Harper's magazine and public distribution."

So here I am, a lone hominoid, in my home at the tip of where Homo sapiens derive. I can't stop my hominid musings: Where did it all go wrong, this stepping out in the garden of Earth — and my particular little rainbow piece of that paradise?

LETTER FROM SOUTH AFRICA

As 2002 dawned, I despaired. The third year of the 21st Century marked the fourth anniversary of my investigation into the Great AIDS Debate as it played out after President Thabo Mbeki had publicly questioned the HIV/AIDS paradigm and the toxicity of antiretroviral therapy. Two years had passed since his Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel had met and what was called an "Interim" report had been issued. Recommendations to conduct experiments to settle unresolved issues had no support and scientists were divided against themselves on a way forward.

Legend has it that South African President Thabo Mbeki discovered AIDS dissent on the internet. It’s a shame that he didn’t look further and find out more about AIDS dissent than he currently seems to know. He is overlooking an alternative view of the epidemic that is more grounded in reality than the one that has made him so controversial. Ironically, this other view also holds that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, but argues that there is a real AIDS epidemic and a real AIDS virus.