Shame, shame, shame. Any credibility the National Post might have claimed in the area of medical reporting was lost when it published excerpts of Nicholas Regush's recent book and gave this irresponsible journalist a forum to articulate his view that HIV may not be the cause of AIDS.
The result will be to undermine public-health efforts to control the spread of HIV in Canada and elsewhere. This is unfortunate, as HIV is projected to become the world's leading cause of death within the next five years. Indeed, more than 35 million people are known to be infected by the virus. Most of them live in countries in which antiretroviral therapy is unaffordable for all but the richest segments of society, thus condemning the vast majority of HIV-infected individuals to develop AIDS and suffer certain death.
Perhaps Mr. Regush truly believes what he has written. One thing, however, is certain; he does not have the right to publish false or misleading information that endangers public health. Scientists who have devoted their careers to waging war against HIV will not back down from this challenge.
In general, the press has done an excellent job of reporting worldwide AIDS statistics. These include the fact that more than six million children in developing countries have already been orphaned because of losing parents to the AIDS epidemic, and that approximately 1,600 HIV-infected babies are born each day. Yet, in spite of this, it seems as though the press is often anxious to present dissenting views suggesting HIV does not cause AIDS. This point is frequently promulgated by fringe groups with little or no scientific training or credibility.
Remember, for example, the recent case of 37-year-old Sophie Brassard, a Montreal woman who lost custody of her HIV-infected children because she refused to allow them to be treated with anti-HIV drugs. Instead, Ms. Brassard cited arguments that HIV is not the cause of AIDS and that the drugs used to treat AIDS are toxic.
Why do newspapers present this so-called "anti-establishment" case as though it merited some degree of respect? After all, would the same journalists do stories on groups that said cigarette smoking does not cause cancer or that a high-cholesterol diet does not put you at risk of cardiovascular disease? Surely not, and if they tried their editors would stop those stories from being printed. In general, responsible journalists understand that there is a public-health dimension to every medical story they write, and that they have a responsibility to participate in the prevention of disease.
In contrast, HIV educators, physicians and scientists must constantly battle in support of the HIV causality of AIDS. How tragic, when you consider that the notion that HIV does not cause AIDS is most likely to resound well with the least educated and most vulnerable members of Canadian society, including street kids, drug users and some members of our aboriginal communities.
The reality is that government statistics in Canada indicate a drop in the rate of HIV-infected babies by as much as 90 per cent during the past decade, as virtually all HIV-infected pregnant women are now advised by their obstetricians to take a combination of anti-HIV drugs during pregnancy. Had Ms. Brassard done likewise, she would now have two healthy children and have been spared her recent ordeal.
Perhaps women like Ms. Brassard are in denial, because they are riddled with guilt, having failed to heed doctors' advice on this subject. Perhaps they now have no choice but to deny the HIV/AIDS link to maintain some semblance of emotional stability. Or perhaps Ms. Brassard refused to take antiviral drugs during her pregnancy because she had read a newspaper article that gave credence to the notion that HIV doesn't cause AIDS.
It is time that journalists like Mr. Regush were exposed. The world has witnessed a long series of litigations in which tobacco companies have been accused by governments, including those of several Canadian provinces, of deliberately promoting the sale of cigarettes in spite of certain knowledge that cigarette smoking is both addictive and causes cancer and other diseases.
Had a newspaper run stories saying that cigarette smoking is innocuous, there would be a strong possibility of lawsuits by both the federal and provincial governments as well as journalistic censorship. Freedom of the press does not include the right to publish material that may be misleading or injurious to public health. Mark A. Wainberg, president of the International AIDS Society, is a professor of medicine at McGill University and head of AIDS research at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal.