Denialism flourishes while AIDS victims die

A large group of people around the globe are spreading the word that AIDS is a hoax and that medications for it are actually toxic poisons.

AIDS denialists are similar to Holocaust deniers or 9/11 truth seekers, says Seth Kalichman, professor of social psychology and an NIH-funded AIDS researcher. The difference, he says, is that AIDS denlalists are causing thousands of people, even hundreds of thousands in Africa, to die.

His new book, Denying AIDS: Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, and Human Tragedy (Springer), explores his research into the AIDS denial movement. He is donating all royalties from the book to purchase HIV treatments for people in Africa.

Kalichman has directed AIDS research projects in Atlanta and South Africa and has spent 20 years studying ways to prevent AIDS and helping people access and take their medications regularly.

A couple of years ago, he became alarmed by the damage being done by AIDS denialists in persuading people to forego medication.

The result was deadly. In South Africa alone, a 2008 Harvard University study showed that as many as 365,000 people died when President Thabo Mbeki, a denlalist, refused to provide antiretroviral medications to HIV-positive patients.

Posing as a student of public health, Kalichman made contact with denalist groups in the U.S., learning about their beliefs and the harm they are causing.

Some are academics at leading institutions such as the University of California at Berkeley, he says. Others are freelance journalists, and others are activists who are HIV-positive and are in their own state of denial.

They are effective at encouraging others to make deadly health decisions based on misinformation, he found.

Denialism is flourishing on Internet sites, he learned.

To learn more about his findings, listen to this podcast: http://www.clas.uconn.edu/podcasts/seth.mp3

For a video of Kalichman describing his findings: click here