Rian Malan, branded an “AIDS dissident” years ago for, among other reasons, his questioning of offical AIDS statistics, reopens the issue in his new book, Resident Alien, which features the full version of an essay on AIDS that Kevin Bloom highlighted in his recent review of the book.
Now, the Treatment Action Campaign picks up the trail. The organisation’s Nathan Geffen responds to “the shameless Rian Malan”:
In 2001, Rian Malan wrote an article in Rolling Stone questioning the accuracy of HIV tests in order to disparage the evidence of a growing HIV epidemic in South Africa. In 2003 he published similar articles in the Spectator and Noseweek. All these articles were replete with errors. I subsequently debunked the latter two in a January 2004 article.
One of Malans errors was particularly serious. He presented miscalculated, massively understated estimates of AIDS deaths which he falsely attributed to Stats South Africa. As I wrote then, the mistake was so serious and obvious that it raised questions about Malans basic competence as a research journalist -or more disturbingly- about his motives and integrity.
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November 26th, 2009 @11:03 #
There's a lot of heat and name-calling on both sides, but I'm with the TAC on this one. No one who has lived in South Africa for the past 15 years (with their eyes open) can doubt that we were indeed trembling on the brink of an AIDS apocalypse. And the only reason the death toll has stabilised recently is thanks to the ARV roll-out programme.
For Malan to suggest that it's all a giant conspiracy by Big Pharma to keep the AIDS funding money rolling in is just ludicrous. The AIDS crisis has posed a critical threat to the pharmaceutical industry in recent years. There has been very serious discussion about nationalising the whole industry in order to provide affordable drugs to the population. And the worse the AIDS figures look, the more serious the discussions become. It is certainly not in the interests of big business to inflate the figures.
As for implying that individual doctors and AIDS researchers are cynically manipulating the death toll to keep their meal tickets alive - eish - you'd need to be toking on some pretty strong stuff to come up with that.
November 26th, 2009 @13:12 #
For me, it's a question of scale. "Gee, the economic boffins say we'll get more funding if we claim to have five million infected with Aids, instead of four million." (The kind of cynical manipulation of figures that made Mark Twain say there are "Lies, damned lies, and statistics.") For me, the burning issue is: what about the four million?????? Hell, I don't care if it's only 400 000. Even at 40 000, it would still be a pandemic.
For 23 years, I've driven through remote Eastern Cape/Free State dorps en route to my parents' smallholding. About 15-10 years ago, I started noticing the many fresh graves in the rapidly spreading cemeteries. Six months later, I'd be back, and the cemetery size would have doubled. And again on the next trip. And again... I did the trip for the first time in several years a few weeks ago. And blow me down, those cemeteries have stabilized -- they're only slightly bigger than they were two and a half years ago. There's nothing quite as sobering seeing the effects of a massive plague -- and the impact of ARVS -- with one's own eyes.
November 26th, 2009 @13:49 #
Exactly, Helen. And if you look at the birthdates on those gravestones (a grim hobby of mine) you will see that they were all born in the 1970s and 1980s. Were those people all hit by cars or struck down by rare leukaemias? I don't think so.
November 26th, 2009 @16:13 #
Malan set out to "moer Mbeki". Can u imagine how crap it must be to have to partially agree with him. I trust "The Body Count" and think it's more likely TAC is reacting from an emotional point of view. I agree with the ARV premise re death numbers but also think that we should be more brave about talking about issues like HIV - the topic has been dumbed down and i know of 2 communication companies who read all the info in the early 2000s and decided to keep the USP as "have sex without a condom, get AIDS" which is bullshit, esp considering that the test relies on false negatives and diagnosis (i.e. status) changes from country to country.