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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HIV/AIDS denialism | 3/9 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_denialism | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:21:05.729092+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== US courts === In 1998, HIV/AIDS denialism and parental rights clashed with the medical establishment in court when Maine resident Valerie Emerson fought for the right to refuse to give AZT to her four-year-old son, Nikolas Emerson, after she witnessed the death of her daughter Tia, who died at the age of three in 1996. Her right to stop treatment was upheld by the court in light of "her unique experience". Nikolas Emerson died eight years later. The family refused to reveal whether the death was AIDS related.
=== South Africa === In 2000, South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki invited several HIV/AIDS denialists to join his Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel. A response named the Durban Declaration was issued affirming the scientific consensus that HIV causes AIDS:The declaration has been signed by over 5,000 people, including Nobel Prize winners, directors of leading research institutions, scientific academies and medical societies, notably the US National Academy of Sciences, the US Institute of Medicine, Max Planck institutes, the European Molecular Biology Organization, the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Royal Society of London, the AIDS Society of India and the National Institute of Virology in South Africa. In addition, thousands of individual scientists and doctors have signed, including many from the countries bearing the greatest burden of the epidemic. Signatories are of MD, PhD level or equivalent, although scientists working for commercial companies were asked not to sign.In 2008, University of Cape Town researcher Nicoli Nattrass, and later that year a group of Harvard scientists led by Zimbabwean physician Pride Chigwedere, each independently estimated that Thabo Mbeki's denialist policies led to the early deaths of more than 330,000 South Africans. Barbara Hogan, the health minister appointed by Mbeki's successor, voiced shame over the studies' findings and stated: "The era of denialism is over completely in South Africa." In 2009, Fraser McNeill wrote an article arguing that South Africa's reluctance to openly address HIV/AIDS resulted from social conventions that prevent people from talking about causes of death in certain situations, rather than from Mbeki's denialist views. Similarly, political scientist Anthony Butler has argued that "South African HIV/AIDS policy can be explained without appeals to leadership irrationality or wider cultural denialism." In July 2016 Aaron Motsoaledi, the Health Minister of South Africa, wrote an article for the Centre for Health Journalism in which he criticised past South African leaders for their denialism, describing it as an "unlucky moment" in a country which has since become a leader in treatment and prevention.
== Denialists' claims and scientific evidence ==