aids denial film transcript
Some of you may be aware of House of Numbers, a documentary purporting to raise questions about HIV/AIDS funding. One of The Spectator's writers has been helping to promote the film apparently on the grounds of generating discussion. Now while generating discussion sounds innocuous enough it's also an obfuscatory tactic used by blustering bullshitters with no real evidence on their side.
By all accounts House of Numbers is a highly skewed and selective piece of denialism, which attempts to show that HIV does not cause AIDS, that HIV may not even exist, and that people will get better if they stop taking anti-retrovirals. These pernicious, unfounded myths may well have contributed to large numbers of deaths, especially in South Africa.
Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog recently linked to a website which is in the process of posting a full transcript of the film with commentary on particular points, and identifying which of the talking heads are active in AIDS denialism. I would advise you to take a look at the transcript, and then head over to Bad Science to read more about HIV/AIDS there and on some of blogs linked there. Some information on HIV and AIDS can also be found at Wikipedia in semi-protected articles. Semi-protected because I suspect otherwise they'd be subject to vandalism by the crazies I suspect will arrive to comment shortly.
By all accounts House of Numbers is a highly skewed and selective piece of denialism, which attempts to show that HIV does not cause AIDS, that HIV may not even exist, and that people will get better if they stop taking anti-retrovirals. These pernicious, unfounded myths may well have contributed to large numbers of deaths, especially in South Africa.
Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog recently linked to a website which is in the process of posting a full transcript of the film with commentary on particular points, and identifying which of the talking heads are active in AIDS denialism. I would advise you to take a look at the transcript, and then head over to Bad Science to read more about HIV/AIDS there and on some of blogs linked there. Some information on HIV and AIDS can also be found at Wikipedia in semi-protected articles. Semi-protected because I suspect otherwise they'd be subject to vandalism by the crazies I suspect will arrive to comment shortly.
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