KalahariLog
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Dr. Manto Tsabalala-Mismang has been Thabo Mbeki's Minister of Health since 1999. She is a product of the Russian Leningrad Medical Institute. In addition to her training in the Soviet Union, she also studied in Tanzania and later got a Master's degree in public health in Belgium. Her CV offers other insight into her accomplishments, among them "a 3-weeks Medex course, University of Hawaii". In short, she seems to be a career bureaucrat with good connection with the powers to be at the ruling party, ANC. At some point in the 70's she even worked as a superintendent for 10 satellite clinics in Botswana.
Her name is forever linked with the moronic handling of the HIV-AIDS crisis in South Africa. She is called Dr Beetroot for recommending beetroot, garlic, lemons, and potatoes to people with AIDS, while warning them not to use antiretrovirals because they are unsafe and toxic. Just as we arrived in Botswana this August the International AIDS Conference was taking place in Toronto and the UN special envoy for AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, was shown on local TV blasting the South African government for promoting the "lunatic fringe" of AIDS researchers. He also said that the SA government will "never achieve redemption" for its attitude towards HIV-AIDS which he summarized as "obtuse, dilatory, and negligent about rolling out treatment". At the end of the conference 65 world-experts on AIDS signed a letter to Mbeki asking him to fire his Minister of Health. What brought this on, you ask? South Africa's exhibition at the Conference were, you guessed it, beets, garlic, lemon, and potatoes. "People say 'Your stall is great'. We haven't shocked the world; we have told the truth", said Dr. Beetroot.
So how could this happen, in 2006, after all that is known about HIV/AIDS, after 5 million people have been diagnosed with the disease in SA, after nearly 200,000 died in 2005? It turns out that in 2000 President Mbeki appointed a commission to guide his HIV-AIDS policy (see some of what they had to say). Among the people on that commission were Claus Koehnlein (Germany), Christian Fiala (Austria), and Peter Duesberg (USA) who wrote "Any recommendation concerning treatment or prevention has to be discussed on the basis of a complete lack of basic data. The panel was not provided with any reliable data whether there is a problem at all and if so of what magnitude. This is especially worrisome when it comes to the use of so-called antiretroviral drugs."
Koehlein, Fiala, and Duesberg are well known weird-science Germans who argue that the HIV virus doesn't exist and that AIDS is a lifestyle disease (caused by lifestyle drugs in the west and by antiretrovirals and condoms elsewhere). Koehnlein was a Doctor at the University of Kiel in Germany and later worked in private practice. Among his notable accomplishments is a recent book titled Virus Mania in which he claims that HIV-AIDS, SARS, Bird Flue, Hep C are all inventions of the pharmaceutical companies in order to sell expensive drugs. Fiala is an Austrian gynecologist with similarly unorthodox ideas about diseases. Duesberg has to be the worst of them and he is a Professor at UC-Berkeley! He started as a very successful scientist, well funded by NIH and even invited to the Academy of Sciences. After he started arguing that AIDS can be explained by bad drinking water he hasn't been getting many research grants but, nonetheless, has managed to put a country of nearly 50 million people a decade back in time and has contributed to the orphaning of over a million children. I wonder if tenure can protect him from something this serious or maybe Berkeley is just waiting for him to retire (he is 70) in order not to draw attention.
It is not too surprising then that the President himself publicly and recently insists that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. Instead, Mbeki calls AIDS "a disease of poverty". Most people who know him are stunned by this obvious idiocy, but some point to quotes like this that may explain what's behind this: "Convinced that we are but natural-born, promiscuous carriers of germs, unique in the world, they proclaim that our continent is doomed to an inevitable mortal end because of our unconquerable devotion to the sin of lust."
Her name is forever linked with the moronic handling of the HIV-AIDS crisis in South Africa. She is called Dr Beetroot for recommending beetroot, garlic, lemons, and potatoes to people with AIDS, while warning them not to use antiretrovirals because they are unsafe and toxic. Just as we arrived in Botswana this August the International AIDS Conference was taking place in Toronto and the UN special envoy for AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, was shown on local TV blasting the South African government for promoting the "lunatic fringe" of AIDS researchers. He also said that the SA government will "never achieve redemption" for its attitude towards HIV-AIDS which he summarized as "obtuse, dilatory, and negligent about rolling out treatment". At the end of the conference 65 world-experts on AIDS signed a letter to Mbeki asking him to fire his Minister of Health. What brought this on, you ask? South Africa's exhibition at the Conference were, you guessed it, beets, garlic, lemon, and potatoes. "People say 'Your stall is great'. We haven't shocked the world; we have told the truth", said Dr. Beetroot.
So how could this happen, in 2006, after all that is known about HIV/AIDS, after 5 million people have been diagnosed with the disease in SA, after nearly 200,000 died in 2005? It turns out that in 2000 President Mbeki appointed a commission to guide his HIV-AIDS policy (see some of what they had to say). Among the people on that commission were Claus Koehnlein (Germany), Christian Fiala (Austria), and Peter Duesberg (USA) who wrote "Any recommendation concerning treatment or prevention has to be discussed on the basis of a complete lack of basic data. The panel was not provided with any reliable data whether there is a problem at all and if so of what magnitude. This is especially worrisome when it comes to the use of so-called antiretroviral drugs."
Koehlein, Fiala, and Duesberg are well known weird-science Germans who argue that the HIV virus doesn't exist and that AIDS is a lifestyle disease (caused by lifestyle drugs in the west and by antiretrovirals and condoms elsewhere). Koehnlein was a Doctor at the University of Kiel in Germany and later worked in private practice. Among his notable accomplishments is a recent book titled Virus Mania in which he claims that HIV-AIDS, SARS, Bird Flue, Hep C are all inventions of the pharmaceutical companies in order to sell expensive drugs. Fiala is an Austrian gynecologist with similarly unorthodox ideas about diseases. Duesberg has to be the worst of them and he is a Professor at UC-Berkeley! He started as a very successful scientist, well funded by NIH and even invited to the Academy of Sciences. After he started arguing that AIDS can be explained by bad drinking water he hasn't been getting many research grants but, nonetheless, has managed to put a country of nearly 50 million people a decade back in time and has contributed to the orphaning of over a million children. I wonder if tenure can protect him from something this serious or maybe Berkeley is just waiting for him to retire (he is 70) in order not to draw attention.
It is not too surprising then that the President himself publicly and recently insists that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. Instead, Mbeki calls AIDS "a disease of poverty". Most people who know him are stunned by this obvious idiocy, but some point to quotes like this that may explain what's behind this: "Convinced that we are but natural-born, promiscuous carriers of germs, unique in the world, they proclaim that our continent is doomed to an inevitable mortal end because of our unconquerable devotion to the sin of lust."
posted by Stephen Kobourov # 10:21 PM 
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