To End Debate, Scientists Sign Statement That HIV Causes AIDS

2 July 2000
To End Debate, Scientists Sign Statement That HIV Causes AIDS

Hoping to bury the destructive notion that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is not the cause of the illness and global epidemic and to eliminate misinformation, more than 5,000 prominent AIDS experts, other doctors and scientists around the world have signed and released a statement outlining their views. They are calling the document the Durban Declaration.

"Our purpose is to state unequivocally that everyone in the world scientific community with the exception of a misguided fringe group believes that HIV causes AIDS," said Dr. Charles van der Horst, an AIDS specialist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "Any statement to the contrary is just fiction and flies in the face of the facts.

"What's worse is that any such statement does an incredible disservice to the world community," van der Horst said. "We have a terrible epidemic going on that is laying waste to countries in the developing world that don't have the resources we have in developed nations. By promulgating the fiction that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, prevention efforts are thrown out the window, and, I believe, it is like committing genocide."

Professor of medicine at the UNC-CH School of Medicine, van der Horst and several colleagues came up with the idea of a declaration to coincide with the XIII International AIDS Conference, which begins July 9 in Durban, South Africa. The British science journal Nature will print the statement in its July 6 issue. The UNC-CH physician and a half-dozen scientists drafted the document, and more than 250 others served on the committee that spread the word and has been collecting signatures, including those of 11 Nobel Prize winners.

"Our statement is an unprecedented call to arms for the thousands of HIV scientists and clinicians from around the world who are devoting their lives to stopping the spread of HIV and treating millions of patients," van der Horst said. "By doing this, we hope to mobilize the world -- the United Nations -- and all governments to focus on this crisis, which is having devastating consequences. Every decent person should be upset about what's happening and want to do something about it."

Nineteen million people already have died from AIDS, according to the AIDS Research Alliance. The United Nations estimates that half of all 15-year-olds in African countries most affected by AIDS will die even if infection rates drop soon.

"The AIDS epidemic now raging out of control in Africa will be duplicated in India unless we can institute widespread prevention programs," said Dr. N.M. Samuel, president of the AIDS Society of India. "The most potent weapon we have in our fight against this disease is the knowledge that HIV causes AIDS. If we can prevent the transmission of HIV, we can stop the spread of AIDS.

The following is the full text of the Durban Declaration: "Seventeen years after the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), thousands of people from around the world have gathered in Durban, South Africa to attend the XIII International AIDS Conference. At the turn of the millennium, an estimated 34 million people worldwide are living with HIV or AIDS, 24 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa (1). Last year alone, 2.6 million people died of AIDS, the highest rate since the start of the epidemic. If current trends continue, Southern and Southeast Asia, South America and regions of the former Soviet Union will also bear a heavy burden in the next two decades.

Like many other diseases, such as tuberculosis and malaria that cause illness and death in underprivileged and impoverished communities, AIDS spreads by infection. HIV-1, the retrovirus that is responsible for the AIDS pandemic, is closely related to a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), which infects chimpanzees. HIV-2, which is prevalent in West Africa and has spread to Europe and India, is almost indistinguishable from an SIV that infects sooty mangabey monkeys. Although HIV-1 and HIV-2 first arose as infections transmitted from animals to humans, or zoonoses (2), both are now spread among humans through sexual contact, from mother to infant and via contaminated blood.

An animal source for a new infection is not unique to HIV. The plague came from rodents. Influenza and the new Nipah virus in Southeast Asia reached humans via pigs. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in the United Kingdom came from 'mad cows'. Once HIV became established in humans, it soon followed human habits and movements. Like other viruses, HIV recognizes no social, political or geographic boundaries.

The evidence that AIDS is caused by HIV-1 or HIV-2 is clear-cut, exhaustive and unambiguous. This evidence meets the highest standards of science (3-7). The data fulfill exactly the same criteria as for other viral diseases, such as poliomyelitis, measles and smallpox.