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A Harvard University study estimates that 365,000 people in South Africa suffered a premature death due to their government inaction for years. The South African government under former president THabo Mbeki for years denied the scientific consensus on AIDS and did not provide its people with anti-retroviral drugs or drugs that would have prevented pregnant women with AIDS from infecting their children.
Thabo Mbeki was notorious in his denial of the science behind AIDS and often responded that Western lecturing was nothing more than racism that implied that somehow African men were incontrollable sexual beasts. In the end, it was his own people who suffered a horrific fate.
The study noted that had drugs been provided, most of the now dead 365,000 people would be alive.
Even as neighboring Botswana and Namibia were providing their people with drugs even though they had a far less severe epidemic, South Africa for years denied any drug assistance.
The government is now changing policy particularly due to the fact that Mr. Mbeki is no longer president after his party ousted from leadership of the African National Congress - Nelson Mendale’s party - in September.
Mbeki’s successor Kgalema Motlanthe is crippling with the consequences of his predecessor’s denial. That is why he has moved swiftly to put South Africa on track to properly combating AIDS. On the first day on the job - which started two months ago - he removed the Heath Minister, a woman who proposed garlic and lemon juice, among other novelties, as a way to treat AIDS. She was replaced by a Barbara Hogan, a former anti-apartheid resistance figure, who was worked to bring South Africa back into the AIDS-treatment consensus.
“I feel ashamed that we have to own up to what Harvard is saying. The era of denialism is over completely in South Africa,” he stated to The New York Times
Let us hope so for the people of South Africa.
RSS 
As for the mother-child transmission drug, Nevirapine, its use has met resistance/ban in Canada, Europe and Asia. Maybe Mbeki’s resistance becomes unique because he was only an African President who should be following orders from the benevolent pharmaceuticals. But the drug’s misfortunes continue. As late as last Tuesday, a coalition of hundreds of AIDS advocates (led by AIDS Healthcare Foundation) were petitioning the WHO to put an end to its administration as a single dose treatment for expectant mothers/infants worldwide. Is there now a ‘consensus’ that the drug is dangerous? Is this not what Mbeki was saying? How is the coalition’s resistance credible or tolerable and Mbeki’s not?
Medical science shouldn’t have to be a matter of consensus or democracy like politics. Mbeki challenged scientists to offer the facts that showed HIV caused AIDS but instead they went about mobilizing in numbers for ‘consensus’ so as to brand him a denialist. Can’t their scientific facts speak for themselves?
And what is the ”AIDS-treatment consensus”? If one ’LOLZ’ about garlic and lemon juice, what will one do when presented with those who have rejected the ’ARV consensus’ and are living healthy many years later?
HIV/AIDS statistics and estimates have been known to be grossly overstated and I asked for the link in my continued quest to expand my knowledge. It is comforting to know that Harvard ”knows how to record data”.
It is not only Mbeki who has refused ”the scientific consensus on AIDS”. Those in the consensus find it easy to label those raising questions all manner of epithets. Which is particularly unscientific and unhelpful for the advancement of medicine/mankind. And there was a time when the scientific consensus was that the earth is flat.
My point about garlic is that one cannot laugh away its medicinal values which include immune boosting. And i have not recommended anything to anyone to treat anything. As for the S. African government disagreeing with me, I doubt if its stand will ever become the scientific stamp of approval. What happens when the next S.A president (Zuma) replaces the new health minister with one who agrees that a cold shower after sexual intercourse prevents HIV infection?
Without questioning and a good dose of skepticism, i doubt if science would have come this far. It is at the heart of the scientific method. So, although we are not reviewing Harvards research methods here, i find nothing ”dangerous” in asking questions about their work.
