Aids and the Third World
(Also billed as: From Gay Disease to World Problem)
On November 13, 2006, Dutch university professor Joep Lange,
who is considered an authority on HIV-AIDS, gave a presentation which
was billed as a discussion.
Contrary to the previous evening, when British author Theordore Dalrymple drew a huge crowd in the
same hall,
Lange faced a lot of empty chairs. The people attending appeared to be
mostly medical students, probably Lange’s. In addition a handful of
AIDS-dissidents showed up.
Before the beginning of the lecture, one of the dissidents handed out a
flyer titled “From Doctor to Dealer, a brief, unauthorized biography of
Joep Lange” highlighting Lange’s work on AZT for GlaxoSmithKline and
other industry-related interests. The evening’s host and moderator,
freelance science journalist Maarten Evenblij, promised the dissidents
that their views would be heard and debated. But after Lange gave his
speech reflecting the already well-known position of the
medico-pharmacological industry, he refused to debate with the
dissidents, saying that he didn’t want to “waste his time.”
The dissidents, though disappointed, apparently chose to not force the
issue. Some left. Others listened quietly to Lange. As host Evenblij
did not ignore them, two managed to raise critical issues anyway, which
they did civilly.
The first issue was the matter of vested interest: the evening was
cosponsored by GlaxoSmithKline, as stated clearly on the program.
Lange cut the embarrassing matter short by claiming implausibly that he
didn’t know
that.
The other was the absence of a control group of people diagnosed hiv+
who choose to not be treated for it. To this Lange flashed a sarcastic
statement on the screen:
We think that everyone might benefit if the
most radical protagonists of evidence-based medicine organized and
participated in a double blind randomized placebo-controlled crossover
trial of the parachute.
It was accompanied by a photograph of parachutes.
The comparison, of course, is invalid. The benefits of the parachute to
someone jumping out of an airplane, as opposed to jumping without one,
are immediately visible to any observer, first and foremost the person
jumping, and are consistent. Contrarily, the claimed benefits of
hiv-inhibitors are observable only by lab technicians performing
certain chemical tests on blood, and bear no relation to the
self-defined
wellbeing of the person from whom the tested blood was drawn.
Lange had not come to debate anything. He had come to give what was
essentially a promotional presentation.
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