Celia Farber: Has the Dissenter Become the... Dissentee?

Ms. Farber says that neither she nor Harper's endorse Dr. Duesberg's position, but that she is simply reporting on an unpopular view. "People can't distinguish, it seems, between describing dissent and being dissent," she said.

The one thing we do know, "categorically," is that the myths that have sprung up from Africa about AIDS are "positively absurd," [Farber] exploded, citing theories that HIV is rampantly spreading AIDS throughout Africa. "this really lifts off into science fiction." [...] "I suspect "they" got to him [Nelson Mandela]--Jimmy Carter and all those believing AIDS is pandemic in Africa, Black Africans know that to be loved by the West, you talk their line all the way--especially on AIDS."

"Everybody who was wrong got journalism awards. Everybody who was right got all but driven from the profession," Farber said. Farber exposed the conspiracy between profit-hungry drug companies, researchers who wanted more funding, homosexuals who didn't want the disease to be known as "the gay plague," and conservatives who wanted to turn back the sexual revolution.

"Suffice to say, AIDS professionals will be aghast," Farber declares. "Unless, of course, they've decided to take their cash and their ribbons and helicopter off to their chalets where they can hope to live out their days in anonymity." [Rian] Milan's findings debunk myths that the scientific community has been spreading for 20 years.

I fell silent, realizing from years of reporting on this issue how futile it is to argue when the big club of HIV has been pulled out. Like the child's game of rock, paper, scissors, HIV is always the rock and the scissors.