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Apr. 27th, 2007 09:43 pmBecause AIDS conspiracy theories are part of my grant application, I've been reading a bunch of them. This is very much not my idea of a good time.
I knew, vaguely, that AIDS denialist Christine Maggiore's daughter died of AIDS a couple of years ago. I didn't know the full story - for example, that she hired a toxicologist who is on the "medical advisory board" of her denialist organization (although he's not an M.D. or any other kind of physician) to review the autopsy report and come up with an alternative theory for how the child died.
The guy had a rough time battling with the facts - it's not easy to explain away the fact that the kid's lungs were full of pneumocystis carinii (PCP pneumonia) and her brain was full of p24, the core HIV protein - and in fact, his alternative theory has been exhaustively rebutted by blogger Nick Bennett, who has an MD in pediatrics and a Ph.D. in the molecular biology of HIV. Here's all that Maggiore could come up with as a response:
"I can't believe," I said to Michael, "that even after AIDS killed her daughter, she's still clinging so hard to denialism." And then I realized: of course. It makes perfect sense. No matter how far-fetched the theories she has to endorse, no matter how mountainous the evidence on the other side, no matter how the discrepancies mount up, she has to keep believing. Because if she doubts, even for a moment, then she has to accept her responsibility for her child's death.
I told you this wasn't my idea of a good time.
( some copied comments on the case. )
I knew, vaguely, that AIDS denialist Christine Maggiore's daughter died of AIDS a couple of years ago. I didn't know the full story - for example, that she hired a toxicologist who is on the "medical advisory board" of her denialist organization (although he's not an M.D. or any other kind of physician) to review the autopsy report and come up with an alternative theory for how the child died.
The guy had a rough time battling with the facts - it's not easy to explain away the fact that the kid's lungs were full of pneumocystis carinii (PCP pneumonia) and her brain was full of p24, the core HIV protein - and in fact, his alternative theory has been exhaustively rebutted by blogger Nick Bennett, who has an MD in pediatrics and a Ph.D. in the molecular biology of HIV. Here's all that Maggiore could come up with as a response:
The blogger, who is well known to us (Nick Bennett) states on his website “I have never recieved funding from any pharmaceutical company that makes HIV antivirals. I do not get and have not ever been paid to do this.” This is true, but it’s cleverly worded to avoid the embarrassing fact (that he admitted to me in an email in December, 2005) that “I was funded, on paper, by Astrazeneca for my PhD”.
Astra Zeneca does not make AIDS drugs, but they have still purchased Nick’s loyalty for pharmaceutical solutions in general. And AstraZeneca probably benefits from AIDS in many other ways, as AIDS patients are generally (over)dosed with a variety of drugs apart from antiretrovirals.
"I can't believe," I said to Michael, "that even after AIDS killed her daughter, she's still clinging so hard to denialism." And then I realized: of course. It makes perfect sense. No matter how far-fetched the theories she has to endorse, no matter how mountainous the evidence on the other side, no matter how the discrepancies mount up, she has to keep believing. Because if she doubts, even for a moment, then she has to accept her responsibility for her child's death.
I told you this wasn't my idea of a good time.
( some copied comments on the case. )
