Harvard study blames Mbeki’s AIDS denial for 330,000 deaths
In “Don’t Get Fooled Again” I trace the growth of the insidious cult of AIDS denial, from its origins in the US in the early 1980s, to the moment it was embraced by the South African government of Thabo Mbeki.
The economist Nicoli Nattrass has estimated that 340,000 lives could have been saved had Mbeki not blocked the distribution of lifesaving drugs, under the influence of AIDS “dissidents” including the virologist Peter Duesberg, who insists that HIV does not cause AIDS and is harmless.
Now a study by the Harvard School of Public Health has arrived at a very similar figure, estimating the death toll resulting from Mbeki’s decision to withhold the drugs as “more than 330,000”. The prominent South African HIV treatment access campaigner Zackie Achmat has called for Mbeki to be held to account for his government’s failure, either through a judicial inquiry, or a revived “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”.
Richard Wilson's blog 
[…] Whereas Neville Hodgkinson has since largely been exiled to the journalistic wilderness, Jenkins (like Hodgkinson’s editor and champion, Andrew Neil) appears to have walked away more or less unscathed from his romantic entanglement with one of the world’s deadliest ideologies. […]
Simon Jenkins, (lapsed?) AIDS denialist… « Don’t Get Fooled Again
July 23, 2009 at 1:41 pm