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The Denialists Word for Black Rhinoceros

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The Denialists Word for Black Rhinoceros says “H.I.V. and AIDS Clinic.” There are AnnAls of science no doctors, nurses, or medical techni- cians at this particular clinic, and just one product: ubhejane, which is the Zulu the deniAlists word for black rhinoceros. Every day, from eight in the morning until four— The dangerous attacks on the consensus about H.I.V. and AIDS. unless he runs out first—Gwala sells ub- hejane in litre-sized milk containers. BY MichAel sPECTER There are two kinds. The bottle with a white lid holds an herbal mixture in- eblon Gwala is a husky forty-nine- to his bed, and eventually, when it had tended to rebuild an immune system rav- year-old man with an unusually grown to eighty-nine, his grandfather in- aged by the AIDS virus. The second, with vividZ dream life. For many years, he structed him to divide the herbs into two a blue lid, is a potion to reduce the worked as a long-haul truck driver, criss- groups and boil each batch. The result- amount of the virus that has already ac- crossing South Africa from his base, in ing concoctions, the apparition assured cumulated in the bloodstream. Durban. But he is in a different business him, would cure AIDS, the disease that On a typical day, as many as a hun- now. A few years ago, Gwala began to was destroying his country. Gwala fol- dred people come to Gwala’s clinic, each dream about herbs. Some nights he lowed instructions. He quit his job, paying the equivalent of about a hundred would see just one, on others two or turned his garage into a factory, and dollars—nearly two weeks’ pay—for a three. Gwala’s grandfather, who died opened a storefront dispensary in down- thirty-day supply. Gwala says that the when he was a boy, was a traditional vil- town Durban, wedged between a dry medicine never fails. He also says that he lage healer, and in the dreams he would cleaner and a furniture store. He hung has no idea how it works. “Ubhejane pro- tell Gwala which herbs to collect and two signs next to the door: one has “Doc- tects the cells from any virus,’’ he told me where to get them. Gwala kept a list next tor Gwala” written on it, and the other when I met with him at his clinic, last As prominent South African politicians dismiss antiretroviral drugs as “poison,” traditional healers have flourished. TNY—2007_03_12—PAGE 32—133SC.—livE ArT r15820_B.EPS, CriTiCAl CuT To BE watchEd ThrouGhouT ENTirE PrESS ruN! fall. “I don’t know how that happens. I year, a thirty-five-year-old man who had am not a scientist. But what I do know is unprotected sex with three women—and that people who were on the edge of infected one—despite knowing that he death go back to work. It makes them was H.I.V.-positive, was found guilty of feel better, and it gives them life.” endangering their lives. He has appealed, The use of ubhejane has been encour- saying that H.I.V. does not cause illness. aged by President Thabo Mbeki’s Health His main witness is Eleni Papadopulos- Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, Eleopulos, a medical physicist at Royal and by the Director-General of Health, Perth Hospital, who claims that H.I.V. Thami Mseleku. The health minister in has nothing to do with AIDS. The Perth the province of KwaZulu-Natal has also Group, as she and several other Australian spoken in favor of the remedy, and the H.I.V. denialists are known, has argued mayor of Durban has supplied funds to for more than twenty years that the virus buy it for patients at a hospice not far has never been isolated or identified prop- from the city. Ubhejane’s most vigorous erly. Papadopulos-Eleopulos and her col- promoter, a retired professor of sociology leagues insist that AIDS in gay men results named Herbert Vilakazi, says that anti- from drug abuse and repeated exposure retroviral drugs, or A.R.V.s—which have to semen. Last month, the President of proved to be the only successful treat- Gambia, Yahya Jammeh, disclosed that ment for the millions of people infected he had found a secret remedy for AIDS and with H.I.V.—are so toxic that they can asthma, and announced that he would cause more harm than good. Like Mbeki begin to cure AIDS on Thursdays and himself, he seems to be convinced that a asthma on Saturdays. genuine cure for AIDS is more likely to be AIDS denial plays a corrosive role in found in the arsenal of traditional Afri- the health policies of many countries, but can medicine than in any chemical com- nowhere has the damage been as extreme pound sold by a Western pharmaceutical or as enduring as in South Africa. Five company. For years, Vilakazi, Mbeki, and a half million of the country’s forty- and Tshabalala-Msimang have used eight million people are infected with words like “damaging,” “toxic,” and “poi- H.I.V., which makes South Africa by son” to describe A.R.V.s. any epidemiological standard the coun- Ubhejane is far from the first untested try with the world’s deadliest AIDS epi- remedy that South African leaders have demic. Nearly a thousand people there recommended to aids patients. Viro- die of AIDS every day, and at least twice dene, a powerful industrial solvent with that many are newly infected. Between no medicinal value, was embraced by 1997 and 2004, death rates from infec- Mbeki and his comrades as soon as it was tious diseases more than tripled for men introduced by South African researchers, and increased fivefold for women—from in 1997. More recently, Secomet V, an numbers that were already among the extract from red clover, made a splash in worst in the world. The country, while the market. It is sold as Ithemba Le- not rich, has sub-Saharan Africa’s largest sizwe—Hope of the Nation. Minister economy, and it is one of the few on the Tshabalala-Msimang, whose antipathy continent that could genuinely afford to toward pharmaceutical AIDS treatments administer an antiretroviral-drug regi- has long been an international scandal, men that would cover those people who has never wavered in her support for such need it. Today, only about two hundred remedies. Last summer, she astonished thousand receive the drugs. participants at an international AIDS con- Recently, there have been hints that ference in Toronto by presenting a gov- the government might be open to a ernment public-health display that fo- new approach. Last fall, South Africa’s cussed on beetroot, olive oil, garlic, Deputy President, Phumzile Mlambo- lemons, and African potatoes. Antiretro- Ngcuka, a progressive and measured viral drugs were included only after furi- leader, emerged as the government’s ous protests. most prominent spokesman on AIDS— Denying the scientific consensus in part, it seemed, because Mbeki’s Health dux E about what causes AIDS and how to treat Minister, Tshabalala-Msimang, had /r A ilv it is not limited to South Africa, of course. been seriously ill. Ever since her appoint- S o A H.I.V. itself is now on trial before the Su- ment, in 1999, Tshabalala-Msimang has jo preme Court of South Australia. Last been one of the world’s most polarizing the NEW YoRKeR, MARCH 12, 2007 33 TNY—2007_03_12—PAGE 33—133SC. Without Duesberg’s research, there might have been no significant progress in treating AIDS. In the nineteen-eighties, Robert Gallo, the American scientist who shares a negotiated credit with the French virologist Luc Montagnier for discovering the AIDS virus, had high praise for Duesberg. Introducing him at a scientific conference in 1984, he said, “He was among the first, or perhaps even the very first,” to characterize the struc- ture of the viruses. “He was involved in the first work that provided a genetic map of retroviruses.” Retroviruses can cause several ill- nesses, including some cancers, but it wasn’t until 1983, when French scien- tists conducted a biopsy on the lymph •• nodes of a gay man who had suddenly become sick, that antibodies from a ret- and controversial public-health officials. dead.” She said that she was at the clinic rovirus were found. For more than a She and her husband, Mendi Msimang, because she believes in President Mbeki hundred years, the presence of antibod- a senior official in the African National and suspects that Western drugs won’t ies against any disease had been inter- Congress—the country’s ruling party— save her granddaughter; she knows too preted as good news: antibodies are pro- became close to Mbeki in the nineteen- many people who have died. teins that the immune system uses to sixties, when the A.N.C. was exiled in “The people who want to take those fend off attacks by viruses and bacteria as Zambia. A.R.V.s can take them,’’ Gwala told me they circulate in the bloodstream; if you Mlambo-Ngcuka’s new role has been as we watched his wife hand out bottle have antibodies against chicken pox or greeted with caution, because Mbeki after bottle of ubhejane. “But they don’t measles, it means that your immune sys- has inched away from aids denialism in cure anything. The side effects are like tem is ready to fight the virus. That is the past. In 2002, the cabinet took the poison, and people get sicker. Ubhejane how most vaccines work: they train unusual step of officially affirming that doesn’t hurt anyone.
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