Flooded with congratulatory e-mails from AIDS dissenters worldwide in response to last week’s feature, “AIDS dissidents: blinded by pseudoscience or asking the right questions?” we thought we’d state our position on the AIDS dissident movement: You’re all nuts!

The AIDS dissident movement, often referred to as the AIDS denialist movement, is a loosely connected group of activists, journalists, scientists and HIV-positive people who dispute the scientific consensus that HIV is the cause of AIDS. They say that the first U.S. AIDS cases were caused, not by HIV infection spread through unprotected sex, but by illicit drug use, amyl nitrate sniffing and exposure to antibiotics used to combat venereal diseases rampant in the 1970s.

AIDS researcher John P. Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Cornell University and the recipient of AIDS drug manufacturer Bristol-Myers Squibb’s $500,000 “Freedom To Discover” grant, had this to say about it:

“[The AIDS dissident movement] basically says that every scientist, every physician and every clinician out of the hundreds of thousands of professionals working worldwide on this is either some kind of malicious scumbag who will do anything for money, or we’re all stupid.”

Not even Rosie O’Donnell, with all her crackpot conspiracy theories, is crazy enough to contend that hundreds of thousands of medical professionals and researchers are in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry to milk supposedly healthy people dry while supplying them with toxic drugs –which, according to AIDS dissenters, is the current cause of AIDS in America and Europe.

Even the devastation caused by AIDS in Africa won’t sway die-hard denialists, who claim that it is not HIV/AIDS but a set of pre-existing conditions such as diarrhea, high fever, weight loss and dry cough that is killing millions.

Yet, despite the fact that AIDS dissenters are at odds with majority opinion, they are part of our collective story and should not be silenced. Their message may be reckless, even dangerous, but so is blindly accepting the status quo. We welcome watchdog groups that police pharmaceutical and insurance companies, or anyone who stands to profit off the sick and dying.

Consequently, in last week’s feature, we attempted to present both sides of the story. It’s our job to inform; it’s up to you to decide. We reserve our opinion for the editorial page and encourage you to continue letting us know how you feel about what we publish.

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