AIDS Denialism Research Articles

Unbundling Property in Welfare

Abstract In most Western jurisdictions, welfare law utilises means testing to determine whether individuals are eligible for welfare allowances, often using property ownership as one of the eligibility criteria. Crucially, the prevailing conception of property ownership is premised on the notion that property rights are applied equally to all owners in matters relating to the control and management of that property. When this assumption proves not to reflect reality, it can have devastating consequences for those most in need of the support ostensibly provided by welfare law. The present qualitative empirical study examines two cases in which such adverse consequences are felt: in the two largest minority communities in Israel—the Palestinians and the Ultraorthodox Jews (Charedi). The findings show that property ownership in these communities is realised hierarchically, along patriarchal lines, and that family members occupy and manage property in accordance with community customs and traditional norms, often far removed from state laws. Beyond theoretical debates or ethnographic observations, the discrepancies between the state’s ideas of ownership and those recognised by members of the Palestinian and Charedi communities in Israel often result in the denial of financial aid to those who need it most. This article will identify such differences in conception and will describe how they provide an additional explanation for the high levels of poverty in minority communities. Finally, it will examine two private law doctrines that can be used as inspiration to better interpret welfare law and make it more nuanced and culturally sensitive, especially when it encounters people in poverty and marginalised groups.

Turning the tide in HIV through health communication research.

Turning the tide in HIV through health communication research.

European standards for administrative and legal enforcement of the right to free legal aid and national legislation

The article analyzes the standards of administrative and legal support of the right to free legal aid. It is stated that this right is an inalienable right of everyone and is guaranteed by a number of international instruments, including the European Convention on Human Rights. The analysis of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights revealed the following main violations in the organization of the free legal aid process: 1. Insufficient activity in informing citizens about the possibility of receiving free legal aid and exercising their right to protection. 2. Vague wording of the grounds for refusal or unreasonableness of the decision to refuse in providing the free legal aid. 3. Untimely decision-making. 4. Lack of opportunity to appeal the refusal in providing free legal aid. 5. Lack of a formal decision communicated to the person in response to a request for legal assistance.
 The following requirements for the organization of administrative and legal support of free legal aid are formed from these violations: 1. National institutions are obliged to make decisions in response to requests for free legal aid in a timely manner, which must be clearly motivated. 2. The procedure for appealing against a refusal to provide free legal aid shall be established in the national system. 3. The state is obliged to conduct an active information campaign to inform citizens of their right to free legal aid.
 It is concluded that these requirements are reflected in national legislation in general, but in practice they need some refinement on the formal approach to the denial of free legal aid. Also, it is recommended to work on citizens’ awareness raise, including those imprisoned and their right to free legal aid.

“Where Shall We Place Our Hope?”: COVID-19 and the Imperiled National Body in South Africa's “Lockdown Collection”

“Where Shall We Place Our Hope?”: COVID-19 and the Imperiled National Body in South Africa's “Lockdown Collection”

Integrating the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV into primary healthcare services after AIDS denialism in South Africa: perspectives of experts and health care workers - a qualitative study

BackgroundIntegrating Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) programmes into routine health services under complex socio-political and health system conditions is a priority and a challenge. The successful rollout of PMTCT in sub-Saharan Africa has decreased Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), reduced child mortality and improved maternal health. In South Africa, PMTCT is now integrated into existing primary health care (PHC) services and this experience could serve as a relevant example for integrating other programmes into comprehensive primary care. This study explored the perspectives of both experts or key informants and frontline health workers (FHCWs) in South Africa on PMTCT integration into PHC in the context of post-AIDS denialism using a Complex Adaptive Systems framework.MethodsA total of 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted; 10 with experts including national and international health systems and HIV/PMTCT policy makers and researchers, and 10 FHCWs including clinic managers, nurses and midwives. All interviews were conducted in person, audio-recorded and transcribed. Three investigators collaborated in coding transcripts and used an iterative approach for thematic analysis.ResultsExperts and FHCWs agreed on the importance of integrated PMTCT services. Experts reported a slow and partial integration of PMTCT programmes into PHC following its initial rollout as a stand-alone programme in the aftermath of the AIDS denialism period. Experts and FHCWs diverged on the challenges associated with integration of PMTCT. Experts highlighted bureaucracy, HIV stigma and discrimination and a shortage of training for staff as major barriers to PMTCT integration. In comparison, FHCWs emphasized high workloads, staff turnover and infrastructural issues (e.g., lack of rooms, small spaces) as their main challenges to integration. Both experts and FHCWs suggested that working with community health workers, particularly in the post-partum period, helped to address cases of loss to follow-up of women and their babies and to improve linkages to polymerase-chain reaction (PCR) testing and immunisation.ConclusionsDespite organised efforts in South Africa, experts and FHCWs reported multiple barriers for the full integration of PMTCT in PHC, especially postpartum. The results suggest opportunities to address operational challenges towards more integrated PMTCT and other health services in order to improve maternal and child health.

Disinformation, Misinformation and Inequality-Driven Mistrust in the Time of COVID-19: Lessons Unlearned from AIDS Denialism.

Disinformation, Misinformation and Inequality-Driven Mistrust in the Time of COVID-19: Lessons Unlearned from AIDS Denialism.

Internet-Mediated Aids Denialism, Youth Exposure and Aids Beliefs: The Proselytizing Scenario

Internet-Mediated Aids Denialism, Youth Exposure and Aids Beliefs: The Proselytizing Scenario

DESAFIOS DA AJUDA HUMANITÁRIA INTERNACIONAL: DIREITO DAS VÍTIMAS E DEVER DOS ESTADOS

A ajuda humanitária decorre do direito internacional humanitário como um dever de solidariedade imposto aos Estados. Destaca-se o contexto histórico dos direitos humanos e as normas internacionais sobre o auxílio humanitário, bem como a atuação da ONU e do CICV junto aos Estados como fortes atores humanitários. O Brasil exerce a cooperação internacional por meio de projetos desenvolvidos em outras nações para reconstruir regiões atingidas por catástrofes naturais, adotando medidas de proteção em favor das vítimas, como a Operação de Paz Centro Africana, que contou com uma coordenadora brasileira. Do ponto de vista do direito internacional, embora a soberania dos Estados seja um princípio basilar nas relações internacionais, sua aplicação irrestrita não pode servir como supedâneo para a negativa de ajuda humanitária por parte dos Estados, objeto desta pesquisa qualitativa.

Candle: a light in the dark of Russia's AIDS denialism

The work of the community-based Candle (Svecha) Foundation in St Petersburg began informally in 2001, when a small team of activists came together to run a mutual help group for people living with HIV. At the time, although HIV had already begun to spread rapidly through Russia, treatment and services for HIV and AIDS through the country's underfunded and poorly resourced state health-care system were limited.

Russia considers legislation to tackle rising AIDS denialism

Russia considers legislation to tackle rising AIDS denialism

Difficulties with balance: Normative contestation, ambiguity and change in reporting AIDS denialism

The controversy about policy on HIV/AIDS in South Africa during the presidency of Thabo Mbeki provides an opportunity to study how journalists manage normative difficulties in practice and sheds light on normative change. The politically supported entry of AIDS dissidents into debate and policy-making posed a significant difficulty to journalists in the light of the established norm of balance, which requires journalists to deal even-handedly with the full range of views in a controversy. However, orthodox science and the medical establishment saw the AIDS dissidents’ views as both wrong and dangerous, and progressively delegitimised the dissident view and pushed it out of the public debate. The article traces this process, focusing on the ways in which journalists managed the normative challenge. Some insights about the nature of norms that emerged were that part of journalists’ difficulty is shown to be due to a fundamental vagueness and ambiguity in understandings of balance, which is shown to include two quite different areas of application, identified here as ‘balance of opinion’ and ‘balance of evidence’. Read in the light of the proceduralism of Habermasian discourse ethics, the episode also provides new insight into ways in which broad norms come to be applied in concrete historical circumstances, and how they are adjusted through strongly contested discourses.

‘If she gave birth to a healthy child, then she may forget about her own health’: Postpartum engagement in HIV care and treatment among women living with HIV in Russia

ABSTRACTThere is a dearth of information about the factors influencing postpartum engagement in HIV treatment and care in Russia, a country with an expanding HIV epidemic and poor treatment coverage. The goal of our community-based study was to identify and explore the factors influencing engagement in care after pregnancy. We conducted in-depth interviews with 50 women living with HIV who had recently given birth, and with 20 health care and social service providers in two locations: a large metropolitan city (St. Petersburg) and a semi-urban town near the Ural Mountains. Thematic analysis led us to identify the following themes in regard to factors influencing postpartum engagement in care: feeling overwhelmed with caring for an infant; sense of responsibility for child’s health and well-being; misinformation and AIDS denialism; HIV-related stigma and fear; benefits versus side-effects of ART; professional and personal support; drug and alcohol use; and structural factors. Structural factors include poverty, continued provision of ART after pregnancy, dosage, obtaining necessary documents, and distance to clinic. These findings are important to consider in developing much-needed interventions to promote women’s longer-term engagement in HIV care and treatment in Russia.

‘Our songs were our stones’: song and struggle in the treatment action campaign

ABSTRACTWith 3 million people receiving anti-retroviral therapies (ARV) in South Africa, it has the largest public ARV programme in the world. The implementation of this programme was made possible by the efforts of AIDS advocacy groups that lobbied the government to make ARV available. Chief among these was the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). The group mobilised South Africans across socio-economic and racial lines against the AIDS denial of key members of the African National Congress (ANC). Through interviews with TAC members and ethnographic accounts of ©current activism, this paper examines song as a method of mobilisation against HIV/AIDS-related injustices. As instrumental components of the liberation struggle, songs have become ubiqioutus within protest action, as demonstrated by the recent hashtag student movements. By utilising similar forms of rights-based activism found in the country's liberation struggle, TAC is able to tap into reservoirs of emotional potential rooted in political struggle.

Network Structure of an AIDS-Denialist Online Community: Identifying Core Members and the Risk Group

With rapid growth of online social network sites, the issue of health-related online communities and its social and behavioral implications has become increasingly important for public health. Unfortunately, online communities often become vehicles for promotion of pernicious misinformation, in particular, that HIV virus is a myth (AIDS denialism). This study seeks to explore online users’ behavior and interactions within AIDS-denialist community to identify and estimate the number of those, who potentially are most susceptible to AIDS-denialist arguments—“the risk group” in terms of becoming AIDS denialists. Social network analysis was used for examining the most numerous AIDS-denialist community (over 15,000 members) in the most popular Russian SNS “ VK.com .” In addition, content analysis was used for collecting data on attitudes toward AIDS-denialist arguments and participants’ self-disclosed HIV status. Two data sets were collected to analyze friendship ties and communication interactions among community members. We have identified the core of online community—cohesive and dedicated AIDS denialists, and the risk group: users who communicate with core members, and, thus, can be more susceptible to the AIDS-denialist propaganda and their health behaviors (e.g., refusing treatment). Analysis allowed to significantly reduce the target audience for possible intervention campaigns and simultaneously increase the accuracy of determining the risk group composition.

Mono-Causal and Multi-Causal Theories of Disease: How to Think Virally and Socially about the Aetiology of AIDS

In this paper, I utilise the tools of analytic philosophy to amalgamate mono-causal and multi-causal theories of disease. My aim is to better integrate viral and socio-economic explanations of AIDS in particular, and to consider how the perceived divide between mono-causal and multi-causal theories played a role in the tragedy of AIDS denialism in South Africa in the early 2000s. Currently, there is conceptual ambiguity surrounding the relationship between mono-causal and multi-causal theories in biomedicine and epidemiology. Mono-causal theories focus on single, typically microbial, sources of illness and are most concerned with infectious diseases. By contrast, multi-causal theories allow for multiple factors to underpin a disease’s aetiology, including socio-economic and behavioural factors, and they usually focus on chronic non-communicable diseases. However, if these theories are taken to be strictly distinct, this prevents the inclusion of both microbial and socio-economic factors in a single explanation of any particular disease. This strict distinction became a problem when trying to explain the disproportionate prevalence of AIDS in southern Africa and ultimately contributed to the tragedy of AIDS denialism in South Africa. In tandem with viewing how the perceived divide between multi-causal and mono-causal theories underpinned AIDS denialism, I examine Thabo Mbeki’s specific role, while acknowledging that AIDS is being deprioritised on a broader international level. Overall, I will demonstrate that any long-term plan to eliminate AIDS will require viral and socio-economic factors to be considered simultaneously and that such a theoretical approach requires a clearer understanding of the underlying concepts of disease aetiology.

Conspiracy beliefs and knowledge about HIV origins among adolescents in Soweto, South Africa.

PurposeWe examined adolescents’ knowledge regarding the origin of HIV/AIDS and correlates of beliefs surrounding conspiracy theories in Soweto, South Africa. Now, a decade post-AIDS denialism, South Africa has the largest antiretroviral therapy roll-out worldwide. However, conspiracy theories stemming from past AIDS denialism may impact HIV prevention and treatment efforts.MethodsStudy participants were recruited through the Kganya Motsha Adolescent Health Centre and the Perinatal HIV Research Unit’s Botsha Bophelo Adolescent Health Study (BBAHS). Adolescents were eligible to participate if aged 14–19 years and living in Soweto. We calculated the proportion of adolescents who correctly believed that HIV originated from non-human primates, and used contingency table analysis and logistic regression modeling to describe correlates associated with accurate knowledge and beliefs in conspiracy theories.ResultsOf 830 adolescents, 168 (20.2%) participants correctly identified HIV as originating from chimpanzees and one third (n = 71, 8.6%) believed in a conspiracy theory about the origins of HIV, including that it originated from the US government (2.3%), the pharmaceutical industry (2.2%), a vaccine (2.1%), space (1.5%), and a scientist (0.6%). Participants who were more likely to correctly identify the origin of HIV were older, men, and unemployed. Participants who were men, unemployed or students, and who had a parent or close relative who had died of HIV, were more likely to believe in a conspiracy theory regarding the origins of HIV.ConclusionsAdolescents living in Soweto did not have high levels of accurate knowledge regarding the origins of HIV/AIDS and conspiracy beliefs were present among a small minority of participants. Accurate knowledge of the origins of HIV and debunking myths are important for improving uptake of HIV prevention tools in this population.

Pence, Putin, Mbeki and Their HIV/AIDS-Related Crimes Against Humanity: Call for Social Justice and Behavioral Science Advocacy.

Indiana, a large rural state in the Midwestern United States, suffered the worst North American HIV outbreak among injection drug users in years. The Indiana state government under former Governor and current US Vice President Mike Pence fueled the HIV outbreak by prohibiting needle/syringe exchange and failed to take substantive action once the outbreak was identified. This failure in public health policy parallels the HIV epidemics driven by oppressive drug laws in current day Russia and is reminiscent of the anti-science AIDS denialism of 1999-2007 South Africa. The argument that Russian President Putin and former South African President Mbeki should be held accountable for their AIDS policies as crimes against humanity can be extended to Vice President Pence. Social and behavioral scientists have a responsibility to inform the public of HIV prevention realities and to advocate for evidence-based public health policies to prevent future outbreaks of HIV infection.

The frozen rhetoric of AIDS denialism and the flourishing claims of a cure: A Comparative analysis of Thabo Mbeki and Yahya Jammeh’s rhetoric

ABSTRACTThis article compares and contrasts the frozen rhetoric of Thabo Mbeki’s Aids denialism and Yahya Jammeh’s flourishing claims of a cure for HIV/Aids. While Jammeh invoked Allah as the source of his herbal therapy, Mbeki employed what scientists referred to as pseudoscience to justify his claim. In the final analysis, whereas Mbeki’s denialist rhetoric froze in South Africa, Jammeh’s cure rhetoric continues to flourish in the Gambia. First, the rhetorical situation in both countries is appraised. Next, antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) and alternative therapies, which are at the center of the polemics, are placed in dialogue before the dynamic subject is located at the critical junctures of space, power and the dominant truth games, where the subject shapes the same truth games that shape the subject. Accordingly, the outcomes of the ARVs debate in South Africa and the Gambia flowed from the interactions of space, power and the prevailing truth games in relation to the subject.

Commentary on "Questioning the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis: 30 Years of Dissent".

Commentary on "Questioning the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis: 30 Years of Dissent".

Calling Science Pseudoscience: Fleck's Archaeologies of Fact and Latour's ‘Biography of an Investigation’ in AIDS Denialism and Homeopathy

Fleck's Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact foregrounds claims traditionally excluded from reception, often regarded as opposed to fact, scientific claims that are increasingly seldom discussed in connection with philosophy of science save as examples of pseudoscience. I am especially concerned with scientists who question the epidemiological link between HIV and AIDS and who are thereby discounted—no matter their credentials, no matter the cogency of their arguments, no matter the sobriety of their statistics—but also with other classic examples of so-called pseudoscience including homeopathy and other sciences, such as cold fusion. The pseudoscience version of the demarcation problem turns out to include some of the details that Latour articulates multifariously under a variety of species or kinds in his essay/interactive research project/monograph, ‘Biography of an Investigation’. Given the economic constraints of the current day, especially in the academy, the growing trend in almost all disciplines is that of suppression by threat: say what everyone else says or you won't be hired (tenured/published/cited). In this way, non-citation of outlier views generates what Kuhn called normal science. Finally, a review of Lewontin's discussion of biology shows the continuing role of ideology by bringing in some of the complex issues associated with the resistant bacteria (tuberculosis, Lyme disease, syphilis) and AIDS.