*EPF415 07/13/00
International Scientists Reaffirm HIV as Cause of AIDS
(Group says refusal to accept HIV/AIDS link will cost lives) (570)

Durban, South Africa -- An international panel of physicians and scientists, rejecting the arguments of so-called "AIDS dissidents," has declared that HIV is definitely the viral agent that causes AIDS.

"We wanted to fight an old myth coming back," said Stefano Vella, an Italian physician and president of the International AIDS Society. Vella was also a founding member of the ad hoc committee that wrote the "Durban Declaration" published July 6 in the journal Nature, and compiled the endorsements of more than 5,000 scientists.

"The evidence that AIDS is caused by HIV-1 or HIV-2 is clear-cut, exhaustive and unambiguous, meeting the highest standards of science," states the declaration. Acceptance of the position that AIDS is caused by other factors, as some researchers attempt to argue, "will cost countless lives."

The panel of Durban Declaration supporters met with reporters July 13 at the XIII International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa.

Charlers Van der Horst, a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina in the United States and a founding member of the declaration committee, said, "We hope this conference (in Durban) is a watershed. We need to put all doubt behind us."

South African President Thabo Mbeki gave renewed credibility to the AIDS dissidents earlier this year when he expressed some doubt about the cause of AIDS, despite the widely held conviction throughout the international scientific establishment that HIV is clearly identified as the viral agent that causes the disease. Mbeki's position has cast a shadow over the conference among delegates who fear that it will delay efforts to attack the disease in Southern Africa, a region where 24.5 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, which is more than the number of AIDS victims in any other region of the world, according to international surveys.

South African physician Hoosen Coovadia, the chairman of the Durban conference, said the declaration was not meant to be an attack on Mbeki, but is rather based on the fundamental processes of fact-finding through which scientific truth is revealed. Also a member of the grass-roots committee that promoted the document, Coovadia said that 19 South African scientists were signatories to the Durban Declaration, and he asserted that the majority of scientists in the country support its premise on the link between HIV and AIDS.

"HIV is killing people and we have to start the discussion at that point," said Chewe Luo, a physician at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia, and another founding member of the committee that organized the Durban Declaration.

Members of the panel emphasized the significance of the declaration because of the unanimity of belief it expresses about a scientific principle. Researchers and physicians from more than 50 countries on five continents were signatories, among them 12 Nobel Laureates, directors of leading research institutes, and presidents of academies and medical societies.

Participants in the news conference expressed hope that the strength of the scientific coalition mobilized behind the Durban Declaration will influence lawmakers and policy makers to develop a greater sense of urgency in addressing the AIDS epidemic.

The signatories do not include any government officials or scientists associated with pharmaceutical companies.

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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