SEARCH FOR SOLUTIONS
SOPHIE
This is horrible. My parents are condemned to poison my kids.
Canadian mother Sophie Brassard has tested positive on an HIV test. She
didn’t want to give her children the AIDS drug AZT because she believes it
is toxic. Her children have been taken away by the authorities, and
Sophie’s parents are now legally bound to administer the drug.
SOPHIE
I miss them so much. I’m so scared for them, that permanent damage is
going to be caused to them.
JOAN
In South Africa, many are clamouring to be given AZT. But in other
countries, some HIV positive pregnant mothers are so worried about the
drug’s toxicity that they’ve refused to give it to their children,
resulting in legal actions against them.
MOTHER “A”
I can hardly begin to describe how horrific I find the idea of the
medication AZT being given to pregnant women and new born babies. I’ve
seen the effects of it on adult men and adult women and it’s a very strong
drug. It’s very toxic.
This HIV test positive mother’s rejection of AZT and refusal to test her
baby for HIV went to the High Court in the UK. The judgement went against
her and the judge ordered her to test the child. She fled the country with
her partner and baby, and they are now fugitives. This mother, like
Sophie, is challenging fundamental beliefs about AIDS. New doubts are
rising up about the causes and treatment of AIDS.
JOAN
South Africa is in the middle of an important re-evaluation about what has
been described as the greatest plague the world has known - AIDS. Today
there are many societies and communities around the world who profoundly
challenge the idea that a virus, HIV, causes AIDS. Their voices have
seldom been heard. In Pretoria, South Africa, President Thabo Mbecki is
bringing together an international expert panel to allow a wider range of
opinions to be heard.
PRESIDENT THABO MBEKI
Because we have been as it were bought up on a orthodox view. Certain
things that one thought one knows - HIV equals AIDS equals death. One of
the things that became clear, and which was actually rather disturbing, was
the fact that there was a view which was being expressed by people whose
scientific credentials you can’t question. I am not saying that they are
necessarily correct, but it seems to me that there had been a determined
effort to exclude their voice - to silence it.
I’ve been reporting on the unfolding of the AIDS debate since 1986 in a
series of documentaries allowing some of the experts that have been
marginalised a voice. One of the earliest dissenting voices was that of
molecular biologist Peter Duesberg, member of the US National Academy of
Sciences. Through a series of published papers he has stated that it is not
an HIV or human immune virus that causes AIDS, and that AZT is toxic.
AIDS was not infectious he said, and in Africa people were dying not of
HIV, but of poverty, malnutrition, dirty water, and the old diseases like
malaria and TB, that go untreated. This led our team to travel across
Africa in1993 East to West to Tanzania, Cote D’Ivoire, Cameroon and Uganda.
Our purpose was to find out if people were really dying in high numbers,
and of what. And in Rakai village the total breakdown of the medical
services was all too apparent. We visited the local hospital in this so
called epicentre of AIDS, and found a sorry scene. Not a single AIDS
patient, only an empty ward, no nurses, no doctors, only one tiny baby
suffering from malaria convulsions surrounded by her silent family. We
then found the only member of staff, who got up from her sick bed to speak
to us.
NURSE MAXENSIA
I work as a mid-wife. And I also help in the treatment of other patients
JOAN
How do you feel?
NURSE
Now I am sick.
JOAN
What do you have?
NURSE
Malaria
Lack of staff and medicines at these local hospitals and dispensaries has
meant that sick people simply stay in their own homes. But Nurse Maxensia
did agree to show us the medicine cabinet stocked with some drugs supplied
free under the World Health Organisation Essential Drugs Programme -
however under a new cost-sharing scheme, villagers are now asked to pay a
fixed rate for them - which for most means going without.
Africa has been blamed for the spread of AIDS around the world. But
statistics for AIDS in Africa have been inflated because most AIDS is
diagnosed through symptoms alone without an HIV test. Many people are
wrongly identified. Some TB cases are wrongly called AIDS. Dr Okot-Nwang
is a TB specialist in Kampala, Uganda.
DR OKOT-NWANG
A patient who has TB and is HIV positive would appear exactly the same as
a patient who has TB and is HIV negative. Clinically both patients would
present with prolonged fever, both patients present with loss of weight,
marked loss of weight - both patients would actually present with a
prolonged cough, and in both cases the cough would equally be productive.
Now therefore clinically I cannot differentiate between the two.
In Kagera, Tanzania, Lucy is a frightening example of wrong diagnosis. She
was diagnosed HIV positive in an unconfirmed screening test. She was
ostracised by her community and became very ill. NGO worker Phillipe
Krynen and his wife took her into their care and she was returned to
health.
PHILLIPE KRYNEN
It’s very seldom you see people who have been stigmatised with AIDS who are
not dying a few months later. So Lucy was one of the first persons who,
because we didn’t support the AIDS tag on her, recovered and was proof to
the community that you can recover from such episodes.
LUCIA
I am strong now and I’m back to my old weight so I can do any work I’m
faced with.
JOAN
What would you like to happen?
LUCIA
I hope to have children.
A few months later Lucy tested negative three times running and is now
happily back in her community. As more and more publicity was given to the
possible heterosexual spread of AIDS and the flames of plague terror were
fanned, the issue of the drug AZT, marketed as a cure for AIDS, came to the
fore. AZT was licensed in 1987 to a multi-centre trial in the USA. Those
trials have been described as deeply flawed by AIDS researcher John
Lauritsen, who studied the US food and drug administration papers, which
were acquired through the Freedom of Information procedure.
JOHN
This study was incredibly uncontrolled and sloppy. Violations of protocol
were widespread, and I might add that protocols are the rules of the game
for a study. So if you violate the rules of the game, you are cheating.
MICHAEL COTTERELL
In utter desperation I took AZT. It made me ill. I went through that
process five times. I was never on it for more than a month but my partner
Kevin persisted and he died.
Six years later Michael is in good health and still actively opposing the
marketing of AZT. By 1993 in London the debate about false AIDS statistics
and damage from AZT had spilled out onto the streets. There were strong
protests about the Penta trials across Europe involving giving AZT to
pregnant African women and their babies. This child’s mother felt she
hadn’t been given enough information.
MOTHER
They test him. They will tell me the results in one month’s time but I’m
worried he shouldn’t be given the AZT treatment, and I need more
information about it
Merryland Bazarra from Uganda is a community worker with African families
in London
MERRYLAND
People are suffering. The side effects are so strong from this medicine
AZT, they are losing their muscles, they have headaches, they have
diarrhoea and all this. Most of them are not told about the side effects
so they need more information.
The debate went to parliament in that same year and George Galloway, MP,
tabled a series of searching questions.
GEORGE GALLOWAY MP
If people knew that this highly toxic drug was being administered to
potentially hundreds of small children, as I say, most of them black, most
of them without a voice, their parents without a voice in British society,
then I think these tests would be stopped.
There was little change in the next five years, until the matter was raised
again in the House of Lords in 1999. Information that HIV testing was not
reliable was becoming more public. And the problem of what was being
tested for was under scrutiny. Had HIV ever been properly isolated?
Continuum magazine, edited by Huw Christie, published an interview with HIV
co-discoverer Prof. Lut Montagnier in which he stated that HIV has never
been purified, an essential step in designing reliable tests for any virus.
“Well of course we looked for it , we saw some particles , but they did not
have the morphology of retro-viruses”.
He later said, “I repeat - we did not purify”.
HUW CHRISTIE
It was startling that Prof. Montagnier decided to acknowledge in his
interview with Djamel Tahi at Continuum that as far back as 1983, his team
were not able to purify anything you that might call HIV despite what he
termed a Roman effort. So who should be surprised that when the same thing
was attempted by expert laboratories in Germany and the United States who
published their results in the Journal of Virology, what they found was
proteins and cellular debris.
At the Royal Perth hospital Western Australia, Dr Valendar Turner explains
that without proteins from purified virus, HIV testing could produce
countless wrong results
DR TURNER
If there is such a thing as an AIDS causing retrovirus, then its unique
body parts, that is its proteins, should only be found in HIV positive
individuals, and individuals who have AIDS. But this is not the case - all
the principle HIV proteins have been found in all manner of cells from
healthy human beings who are HIV negative.
Also in Perth, senior AIDS researcher Eleni Eleopolus has published
numerous scientific papers on the disturbing fact that no scientist has
ever collected a pure sample of what people call HIV.
ELENI
There is no way to test for HIV. This is because all the tests are based
on indirect markers, none of which has been validated by proving that the
markers are positive only when the virus is present.
The only type of test routinely used in England and Africa is an ELISA
antibody test. It reacts if a person’s blood has enough antibodies that
bind with a set of test kit proteins - proteins still marketed as belonging
only to HIV. If it reacts, the colour density changes. These changes are
a matter of degree - high or low, not yes or no.
Peter Nicholls is a 25 year old gay man. He volunteered to take part in a
research project co-ordinated for Channel 4. His blood was tested on three
HIV test kits commonly used by laboratories. The blood samples were run
through the kits twice by London university medical school under different
code numbers. Each time Peter’s blood tested positive. But several weeks
later Peter tested negative at St Mary’s hospital, West London. And again
negative at the Royal Free in North London. How did he feel about these
conflicting results?
PETER NICHOLLS
Confused in a way. Obviously glad that now, having received two sets of
negative results, I am obviously fairly confident I am HIV negative now.
But confused as to why I would have received a positive result in the first
place from the experiment that we did. And how many other false positive
results there are floating around that people don’t know about.
Professor Etienne de Harven pioneered the electron microscopy of retro
viruses at the Sloane Kettering Institute in York. Today he is highly
critical of the so called research into HIV.
PROF. ETIENNE DE HARVEN
There is a most urgent need to redirect research funding. Funds should go
to laboratories working on other ideas totally independent from HIV and no
longer restricted to laboratories working on the hypothesis which has never
been proved.
A sense that new information could bring real solutions to AIDS will be
driving President Thabo Mbecki’s international panel. High on the agenda
will be the issue of AZT and pregnant women.
JOAN
Last year you were reported as saying in parliament that you were concerned
about the giving of AZT to pregnant mothers. Why were you concerned?
THABO MBEKI
Well because lots of questions had been raised around the question of the
toxicity of the drug - it was very serious. We have a responsibility as a
government to determine matters of public health, and therefore we can take
decisions - we have to take decisions that impact directly on human beings.
And it seems to me that where doubts have been raised - questions have
been raised around these toxicity questions - and the efficacy of these -
AZT and other drugs, that it was necessary again to go into these matters,
because it wouldn’t sit easily on one’s conscience to discover that you had
been warned that there could be danger and nevertheless you went ahead and
said, despite the danger, let’s dispense these drugs
JOAN
Some AIDS doctors say that the evidence is overwhelming, that HIV is the
cause of AIDS and that AZT is of benefit. What is your comment on that?
THABO MBEKI
Well I say that why don’t we bring all points of view about those matters
together. Let them sit around the table, discuss all of this, produce
such evidence as there may be, and let’s see what the outcome of all of
that discussion is, which is why this international panel that we’re
talking about. They may very well be correct. But I think that if they are
correct and they are convinced about their correctness, it ought to be - it
would be a good thing for them to demonstrate to those who are wrong that
they are wrong.
JOAN
People say that you’re not keen on giving AZT to pregnant women - I’m
personalising this of course - because its too expensive and in some ways
you’re seen as penny pinching. What do you reply to that?
THABO MBEKI
Well that surely must be a consideration for anybody who decides that this
drug must be given to stop these transmissions, as it’s said, from mother
to child transmissions. Its extremely costly - that’s something that we
have to take into account. But you see I’m saying that we also need in that
context to answer questions, particular questions about the toxic effect of
this drug. If you sit in a position where decisions that you take can
have - would have - a serious impact on the health of other people. You
can’t ignore a lot of experience around the world which says this drug has
these negative effects.
JOAN
Why have you been so outspoken recently about greed and the pharmaceutical
companies?
THABO MBECKI
I think a lot of discussion needs to take place; the approach to health and
treatment of people does seem indeed to be driven by profit. We - you
probably would know this - we had a long wrangle with the pharmaceutical
industry internationally about issues of parallel imports and so on. What
we are saying is that we want to make medicines and drugs as affordable as
is possible to what is basically largely in South Africa a poor population.
We needed to find these medicines where they were cheapest, properly
controlled, properly tested, the genuine product, no counterfeits.
JOAN
In the press you are exalted to confine, and I quote, confine yourself to
the job to which you were elected, and leave specialised subjects to the
taking of the best available advice. That was today. What’s your
response?
THABO MBEKI
Well I don’t imagine that heads of government would ever have the
possibility to say, I’m not specialised in economics, therefore I can’t
take economic decisions. I’m not a soldier, therefore I can’t take
decisions affecting the department of defence, or I’m not an
educationalist, a pedagogue, therefore I can’t take decisions about
education, I don’t particularly see why health should be treated as an
extremely specialised thing, about which the president of a country can’t
take health decisions. I think it would be a dereliction of duty to say
well, as far as health policy is concerned we shall leave that matter to
the doctors and the scientists. As far as education is concerned, we’ll
leave that matter to educationalists and pedagofues. I think that is
absurd actually.
JOAN
How do you feel about the reaction of some of your country’s leading
virologists and intellectuals to your position?
THABO MBEKI
I get the sense that, as I was saying earlier, that we’ve all of us been
educated into one school of thought, and really I am not surprised at all
that you would find, I’m quite sure an overwhelming majority of scientists
in this field, in this culture, people would hold a particular point of
view because that is all they were exposed to. This other point of view
which is I think part of what is frightening, this alternative point of
view, in a sense has been blacked out. It must not be heard, must not be
seen. I mean that’s a demand now. Why is Thabo Mbeki talking to
discredited scientists? Giving them legitimacy? Its a very worrying thing
that anybody can say today - in today’s world - that there is a point of
view that is prohibited. That’s banned. That they’re heretics who must be
burnt at the stake. And it’s all said in the name if science and health -
it can’t be right.
JOAN
Now it has been said that the pharmaceutical industry is more powerful than
governments. Are you actually going to go as far as taking this debate to
other world leaders, like President Clinton, like Prime Minister Blair, or
perhaps the Prime Minister of India who has expressed his support for an
investigation into these issues as you are?
THABO MBEKI
Sure yes certainly, I do want to raise the matter with a number of
political leaders around the world. At least to inform them about what we
are doing, to get them to understand the truth about this issue, not what
they might see on television or in some newspaper. And indeed we were very
encouraged to see the Indian government getting itself involved in this
issue. I think the concern around these problem questions which in a sense
have been hidden, I think that concern will grow around the world. And the
matter is critical because the reason we are doing all of this is to be
able to respond correctly to what is reported to be a major catastrophe on
the African Continent. We have to respond correctly, and urgently, and you
can’t say respond correctly by closing your eyes and ears to any point of
view, any scientific evidence that is produced. A matter that is seems to
be very clear, in terms of the alternative view that is being presented,
is what do you expect to happen in Africa with regard to immune systems,
where people are poor, subjected to repeated infection, and all of that?
Surely you would expect these immune systems would collapse, and I’ve no
doubt that that is happening. But then to attribute such immune deficiency
to a virus produces a specific response, and what we are discussing here as
the South African government is that it seems incorrect to respond to this
AIDS challenge, within a narrow band. If we only said there’s a virus -
safe sex, use a condom, end of story, we won’t stop the spread of AIDS in
this country.
South Africa’s children will benefit from the work of President Mbeki’s
expert panel and health workers like Sister Maria Nukeri at the Alexandra
Clinic look forward to the findings.
SISTER MARIA NUKERI
I believe that the step that State President has taken, pertaining to this
panel that has to look into the whole arena of HIV, is most welcomed,
because from that I believe we’ll have a clear mandate as to the way
forward.
