Does InterPares believe
HIV and AIDS are linked?

The feds fund the organization to the tune
of $5 million a year -- some say it's a contradiction

BY OWEN DYER

The Canadian government is giving $5 million a year to a Canadian international aid agency called InterPares, which critics say denies the link between HIV and AIDS, and claims that the growing worldwide AIDS epidemic is a fiction created by the manipulation of statistics.

Rosemary Forbes, of the Inter-Agency Coalition on AIDS and Development in Ottawa, said that while InterPares was a respected organisation that does good work in many fields, the AIDS development community has long been concerned about some of the content on its website.

One article on the site, entitled "Uncommon Questions: A Feminist Explanation of AIDS" said, "It is the theoretical premise that the cause of AIDS is primarily viral, together with the social-sexual theories about the spread of AIDS, that leads to a prediction of an epidemic, not the observable facts [...] The facts simply do not back up the theory."

The article continued to state, "There is serious debate about the positive and negative impact of AZT [zidovudine] and the so-called Èdrug cocktails,' with many critics challenging the claims of their effectiveness in preventing the onset of disease in HIV-positive people."

"In hard numbers," it continued, "relatively few women are diagnosed with AIDS. AIDS statistics are often manipulated to give the illusion of an increase in AIDS cases, when there has actually been a decrease."

Another article on the InterPares website, "The Politics of AIDS" by Brian Murphy, said that medical science "has got it wrong" about HIV and AIDS. "HIV has been demonstrated to be of itself neither necessary nor sufficient to cause AIDS," it said.

This flies in the face of conventional opinion, summed up by the World Health Organisation, which on November 25 said: "The global AIDS epidemic shows no signs of abating. Five million people became infected with HIV worldwide and three million died this year alone -- the highest ever."

It also appears to contradict the position of Health Canada and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) itself. The agency explained its role on its website: "In developing countries, the battle against HIV/AIDS is being fought on the ground. CIDA is supporting several major programs that work with community groups and local organizations to reach vulnerable groups most at risk. They provide community reproductive health services, condoms and help slow the spread of HIV infection through training, education and peer counselling."

Dr Mark Wainberg, director of the AIDS Centre at McGill University, Montreal, said, "it is shameful and alarming that the Canadian government would provide financial support to an organisation that is acting at counter-purposes to the stated position of the government itself."

Molly Kane, the executive director of InterPares, said the authors of the articles are not expressing the views of the organisation, although Mr Murphy is a staffer: "We're funded by CIDA, but we don't represent the government. We don't say that HIV does not cause AIDS." She added that most of the organisation's work is in other areas.

"We don't disassociate ourselves from these articles," she said, "but we didn't vet them to ensure they are in line with our policy either. They are there to generate debate in an important area of public policy. It's easy to lift quotes out of context, but we don't actually deny a link between HIV and AIDS, although there is a growing and legitimate debate on the issue. We recognise that immune deficiency is a major problem, and we believe in free access to antiretroviral drugs."