Fringe medicine can be dangerous to bystanders
The HIV denial movement has for the most part been a silly sideshow, an irritating distraction, to the massive international research effort into preventing AIDS. That’s in the West, though, where public health officials tend to be appointed on their merits. In Africa, the HIV denial movement is not limited to a handful of shonky scientists, but includes the President and the health minister of South Africa. The South African government just announced a major change of heart: it will now be looking at scientific approaches to the prevention of AIDS, including anti-retroviral drugs for the poor and credible sex education. Of particular note is that this announcement has come from the deputy president, not the President himself or the health minister, so it is hard to gauge how seriously to take it. But even if it is genuine, it is far too late for millions of Africans. Depending on the study, the prevalence of HIV in South Africa ranges from 11% to 25% of adults. And by denying the scientific basis of AIDS, the South African government has given credibility to folk medicine, which includes the contemptible belief that having sex with a virgin will cure men of HIV — the result being a surge in child rape cases by HIV-positive men.
Well, you might say, that’s Africa. It couldn’t happen here…
But it could. In fact, it’s happening right now, albeit on a much, much smaller scale. A West Australian man convicted of risking women’s lives through sexual contact will base his appeal on HIV denial. According to ABC Online:
Andre Chad Parenzee is awaiting sentence for having unprotected sex with three women who were unaware he was carrying the HIV virus.
But his lawyer, Kevin Borick, today argued that Parenzee’s conviction should be quashed because there is no scientific proof that HIV actually exists.
Mr Borick will call evidence from two Western Australian based scientists, who will argue that the virus has never been isolated, current testing regimes are inconclusive and that there is no proof HIV is transmitted sexually.
Australia is never going to face the disaster that is facing South Africa. When I say this is on a smaller scale, it’s like a teaspoon to South Afrrica’s ocean. We have a public health system that, whatever its flaws, strives to implement the best available scientific evidence, without political or financial corruption, and the Australian population is reasonably knowledgeable about HIV so rogue opinions are unlikely to gain a beachhead. But even if HIV denial never takes hold in the wider community, as long as there are damn fool scientists prepared to dress up their unfounded opinions as courageous skepticism, there will be a small number of individuals who will seize on those opinions and act as if they were true because they want them to be true.
It is, I hope, unlikely that Mr Parenzee’s appeal will succeed. But even if it fails, it appears that at least one lawyer is prepared to make the case and at least two scientists are prepared to testify in support, and this is all it takes to create a seed of doubt. The MMR-autism crisis in the UK was sparked by a single scientist despite the rapid and forceful debunking by every medical expert and public health body in England.
Next time you think HIV denial is a big problem for Africa but a mere lunatic fringe in Australia, you may be interested to know that even into the 1920s it was a common belief among British and European men that having sex with a virgin would cure sexual infections. As the saying goes, old fallacies never die. They just change their spots. Ask yourself how you would feel about HIV denial if you or your daughter were in the same position as the three women of Mr Parenzee’s acquaintance.
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Sex Has Nothing to Do With AIDS
David Rasnick, Visiting Scientist, UC Berkeley
rasnick@mindspring.com
January 20, 2003
I challenge [doctors] to come up with the names, even one will do, of the persons documented to have shown that AIDS or HIV is sexually transmitted. I know of no such study.
In fact, the scientific, medical literature is full of evidence that neither AIDS nor HIV is sexually transmitted. It is only assumed that they are.
The results of the world’s best scientific study that attempted to measure the efficiency of heterosexual transmission of antibodies to HIV was conducted by Nancy Padian and her colleagues (Padian NS, et al. 1997: Heterosexual transmission of human immunodeficiency virus in northern California: results from a ten-year study. Am J Epidemiol 146: 350-7).
The most striking result of the ten-year study is that Padian et al. did not observe any HIV-negative sex partners becoming
HIV-positive from years of unprotected sexual intercourse with their HIV-positive partners. I repeat?NOT ONE HIV-negative sex partner became positive during the 10- year study. Therefore, the observed transmission efficiency was ZERO.
However, to avoid reporting a zero efficiency for the sexual transmission of HIV, Padian and colleagues assumed that the
HIV-positive sex partners in their study must have become positive through sexual intercourse before entering the study. Using that assumption, they estimated that an HIV-negative woman would have to have sexual intercourse 1,000
times with HIV-positive men before becoming HIV-positive herself. Even more astounding, HIV-negative men would have to have 8000 sexual contacts before becoming HIV-positive.
Virtually identical figures have been reported by others (Gisselquist, D., et al., HIV infections in sub- Saharan Africa not explained by sexual or vertical transmission. Int J STD AIDS, 2002. 13: p. 657-666; Jacquez, J.A., et al., Role of the primary infection in epidemics of HIV infection in gay cohorts. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr, 1994. 7: p.1169-1184).
Given these figures and that the US Centers for Disease Control estimates that one million Americans have antibodies to HIV raises an enormous problem for sexually transmitted HIV. Since there are around 280 million men and women in the USA, that means that on average an HIV-negative woman would have to have random sexual intercourse 140,000 times?and a man eight times that number?in order to become HIV-positive (assuming equal distribution of HIV between the sexes).
Below are additional examples in the literature that neither AIDS nor HIV is sexually transmitted.
- None of the husbands of HIV positive women became antibody positive to HIV over a three-year period. (Lancet ii: 581 (1985), Stewart et al.}
- No transmission of HIV was observed between couples in which all of the women were HIV positive and in which at least 100 sexual contacts occurred. (JAMA 259: 3037 (1988), Padian et al.)
- After a mean of 3-1/2 years of unprotected intercourse, with an average of 50 sexual encounters per year, only one hemophiliac wife became HIV positive. (American Journal of Medicine 85: 472 (1988), Kim et al.)
- No transmission of T-cell abnormalities from hemophiliacs with AIDS to their spouses. (JAMA 251: 1450 (1984), Kreiss et al.)
- “The number of American and European heterosexuals who have had sexual relations with a prostitute, who have no other
admitted risk factors (such as drug abuse), and who have subsequently developed antibody to HIV can be
counted on the fingers of one hand. Sex with a prostitute is not even listed as a risk category by the American CDC.” (Rethinking AIDS, Root-Bernstein, 1993)
- “Non-drug abusing prostitutes have no higher risk of AIDS than other women.” (AIDS: the second decade, report from the
National Academy of Sciences USA, 1990)
The same is true for prostitutes in Germany, Zurich, Vienna, London, Paris, Pardenone (Italy), and Athens. (Klinische
Wochenschrift 65: 287 (1987), Luthy et al.; Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift 98: 697 (1986), Kopp & Dangl-Erlach; Lancet ii: 1424 (1985), Brenky-Fandeux & Fribourg-Blanc; British Medical Journal 297: 1585 (1988), Day et al.; Scand J Infect Dis 21: 353 (1988), Hyams et al.)
Paul, I can’t say I’m impressed with your quoting a popular opinion article written four years ago by David Rasnick, a man whose reputation for distorting the literature is well known and who works for the Rath Foundation telling HIV-positive people not to take antiretrovirals and instead take the company’s proprietary vitamin tablets.
Also, you might be interested to see what Nancy Padian herself had to say about HIV denialists’ misrepresentation of her paper. It can be summarised in these two sentences:
“Individuals who cite [our] 1997 Padian et al. publication or data from other studies by our research group in an attempt to substantiate the myth that HIV is not transmitted sexually are ill informed, at best. Their misuse of these results is misleading, irresponsible, and potentially injurious to the public.”
As for Rasnick’s claim that no study has demonstrated that HIV is sexually transmitted, Padian’s reply lists nearly a dozen salient references, all but 2 of which were published before Rasnick wrote his article. Sorry, but he is not interested in the evidence, only in lying about it.
I’d also point readers to the National Institutes of Health page debunking HIV denial. Note that it too was written in 2003 — so all of this evidence was available to Rasnick at the time he made his claims.
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/evidhiv.htm
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