All I want to know is: does it save lives, and stop mother to child transmission? (To the broad public it does and 800 a day is hard to argue.) So please can we have the truth!
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www.tig.org.za <snip>
What led Thabo Mbeki, energetic architect of AIDS policy during the Mandela years, to become the world's most reviled AIDS sceptic a few months after becoming President himself? What accounts for his ‘inexplicably contrary views on AIDS’? Why doesn’t he ever mention HIV in his public statements anymore? Why does he claim that ‘scientists don't know what they are looking for when testing for HIV’ and that AIDS activists see Africans as ‘promiscuous carriers of germs’ and ‘human beings of a lower order … a depraved and diseased people … perishing from self-inflicted disease … doomed to an inevitable mortal end because of our unconquerable devotion to the sin of lust’? Is he really ‘mad’, ‘a nutter’, ‘no longer playing with a full pack’, ‘off his rocker’, ‘having a nervous breakdown’, ‘suffering from a gargantuan persecution complex’, ‘paranoid’, ‘a man whose sensitivity on race points to a previously undiscovered psychological trauma’?
‘Just say yes, Mr President’ tells the inside story, reports the US Department of Health and Human Services’s implicit acknowledgement of Mbeki’s concerns about antiretroviral drug toxicity, exposes the prevarications of GlaxoSmithKline’s top officers, revisits the ‘Nkosi Johnson’ tragedy, critically evaluates AIDS reporting in the media – notably by the Mail&Guardian, ponders the appeal of AIDS ideology to the liberal/left, to the Church, to medical doctors and to many gay men, explores the Bush administration’s interest in AIDS in Africa, takes Zackie Achmat, Mark Heywood and their Treatment Action Campaign to pieces, sharply critiques Mandela’s involvement in the AIDS causation and treatment controversies – that of several other noisy notables too – and provides a withering radical analysis of Supreme Court of Appeal Judge Edwin Cameron’s leading role as spokesman for what he calls his ‘AIDS movement’ – with staggering conclusions. In doing so, ‘Just say yes, Mr President’ explains the reasons for Mbeki’s sudden lapsed enthusiasm for the AIDS scare generally, and lays bare its poisonous suppositions.
‘An outstanding interdisciplinary study pivotal to understanding Mbeki's stance on AIDS. My respect for his integrity in the face of Western economic and ideological agendas has been deepened. One is reminded that all one knows is learned, but not necessarily true....’ George Davidson MB ChB, PhD (biophysics and biochemistry), Bronte Stuart Prize-winner UCT, senior research scientist, biotech pharmaceutical R&D, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
‘This book is a pit bull … relentless … a tour de force … you write so well … a brilliant and searing polemic … an ugly book, I like that … too cruel.’ Rian Malan , journalist and author, My Traitor’s Heart.
‘... absolutely breathtaking ... ‘n aangrypende ontleding van die ideologiese, religieuse, kommërsiele en kulturele onderbou van 'n definiërende verskynsel van ons tyd, naamlik VIGS. ... [Brink is] een van die interessante denkers wat ek nog ontmoet het.’ Frans Rautenbach, labour lawyer and author, Labour Litigation.
