Nathan Geffen on AIDS Deaths in South Africa

I have already provided a thorough coverage of the flawed Duesberg paper in irresponsible and obscure journal Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology, we can now add a piece written by Nathan Geffen, working with the Treatment Action Campaign in Cape Town, South Africa. He published the article What do we know about AIDS deaths in South Africa? at AIDSTruth.org (perhaps among the best available resources for combating HIV/AIDS denialism online). In it, he showed that two of the main claims made by the recent Duesberg paper is fatally flawed.

The first argument, that the population has increased, can be swiftly dealt with.

The annual number of births in South Africa over the last two decades has been between 1 and 1.2 million. By the best estimate the number of deaths rose between 1997 and 2006 from about 400,000 to about 650,000 annually. This rise in deaths, as I explain below is entirely consistent with our large HIV epidemic, but it is still far below the number of births: hence South Africa’s population has risen.

So the population growth in South Africa is due to high birth rates, not with the scientifically flawed claim that there is no HIV/AIDS epidemic. Geffen also shows that there is plenty of evidence for an HIV/AIDS epidemic, but that the death rates from HIV/AIDS are partially obscured by stigma and partly attributed to the availability of ARVs.

Geffen concludes by asking what we all what to know:

All of the above is of course ignored by Duesberg et al. But it is well known to experts on the South African epidemic. This raises a perplexing question: who were the peer reviewers of the Duesberg et al. article? It is very unlikely that any genuine expert in AIDS statistics would have given their paper the go-ahead.

To be honest, a few seconds spent on Google would have revealed that the “arguments” put forward by Duesberg et. al. were merely rehashing of the same old scientifically flawed claims that have been debunked for decades.