Debating AZT: Mbeki and the AIDS drug controversy
'Debating AZT', the book that started it all, was published in January 2001 and sold in bookshops throughout South Africa. It's now free online (PDF, 1.2 MB) (have a print-shop duplex-print it and bind it for you between soft covers as an A5 paperback).
Although a lot of research literature on the deadly toxicity of AZT and similar drugs has appeared since 'Debating AZT' was published – reporting how AZT kills bone tissue, for instance – I've resisted the temptation to revise and amplify it, because in having ignited the South African AIDS controversy I think 'Debating AZT' is an important historical document on its own terms, and also because it hangs together well as it stands, and I don't want to disturb its narrative flow. (I've been told more often than I can remember, 'I couldn't put it down'; others have said, 'It reads like a detective story' and 'It pulls you in, like a thriller.') See reviews (PDF, 24 KB). It's currently being translated into Spanish by an accredited translator in Mexico.
'Introducing AZT' (PDF, 445 KB) mentioned below updates it. For a quick overview of the subject, read the 12-page A5 leaflet, 'Why do President Mbeki and Dr Tshabalala-Msimang warn against the use of ARV drugs like AZT?' (PDF, 98 KB).
A few remaining paperback copies of 'Debating AZT' are available as collectors' items. If you'd like a now rare, autographed copy of this historically seminal book it's yours at R100, post and packaging in SA included (email me).
Poisoning our Children: AZT in pregnancy
'Poisoning our Children: AZT in pregnancy' (PDF, 1.15 MB) is a compendium of letters to the Medicines Control Council, exhaustively reviewing the foetal and neonatal toxicity literature on AZT. Read it online free – or better: print and bind it between these front (PDF, 537 KB) and back (PDF, 8 KB) covers.
A brief 8-page A5 leaflet 'Why do Zackie Achmat, Nathan Geffen and Mark Heywood want pregnant African women and their newborn babies given AZT? What AZT to does to unborn and newly born children' (PDF, 341 KB) will provide essential information about this horror.
See further, the TIG press statement October 2008 (PDF, 45KB): 'On the 50th anniversary of the thalidomide disaster, another tragedy of countless children killed and maimed foretold', and a final letter to Dr Tshabalala-Msimang concerning AZT in pregnancy (PDF, 169 KB)
The trouble with nevirapine
'The trouble with nevirapine' (PDF, 1MB) is outlined on the back cover (PDF, 145 KB), where you can also read some terrific reviews. Here's the complete cover (JPG, 4MB).
The book was ready for publication in June 2007, with a new closing chapter just added on the politics of nevirapine in Germany, when 'Fit to Govern' came out that month. I thought it imperative to correct Roberts lies about Mbeki's thinking on AIDS and ARVs immediately, so shelved the 'The trouble' to write 'Lying and Thieving' (what I didn't know at the time was that Mbeki saw the same need, and had already contacted biographer Mark Gevisser to set the record straight in 'Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred' - writing to him after it came out to confirm that he'd been right to describe him as an AIDS dissident).
German and Italian translations are underway.
An error: 'TAC attorney Geoff Budlender' was in fact junior counsel in the nevirapine case.
'Just say yes, Mr President': Mbeki and AIDS
The draft prefatory pages (PDF, 673 KB) of '"Just say yes, Mr President": Mbeki and AIDS' provide an outline of the subject of this book. This is my major work in progress with which I have been busy for many years, and I plan to complete and publish it in early 2009.
The book will be a comprehensive history of the South African AIDS controversy and a multidisciplinary analysis and deconstruction of its medical and ideological foundations – and its philosophical and historical ambit is broadening all the time. I promise you this: 'Just say yes, Mr President' will be the 'Das Kapital' of AIDS.
Here's a prospectus (PDF, 353 KB), including a review of all prior biographies and political histories and their failure to get to grips with and explore Mbeki's thinking on AIDS. About half of the document is devoted to an analysis of how Mark Gevisser fucked up his AIDS chapter.
Rude Letters
The back cover (PDF, 40 KB) will tell you about this book in preparation: a collection of terribly rude letters to the AIDS experts and other AIDS promoters in South Africa, asking them a whole lot of foolish questions - only, perhaps not so foolish. To be included are:
A letter (PDF, 36 KB) to Constitutional Law expert Professor Pierre de Vos at the University of the Western Cape;
A letter (PDF, 90KB) to Dr Olive Shisana, CEO of the Human Sciences Research Council and lead author of the 'South African National HIV Prevalence, HIV Incidence, Behaviour and Communication Survey, 2005', followed by an awkward reminder (PDF, 30 KB);
A letter (PDF, 64KB) to South African National Blood Services CEO Professor Anthon Heyns;
A letter (PDF, 31 KB) to Dr Francois Venter, president of the Southern African HIV/AIDS Clinicians Society;
Some questions (PDF, 44 KB) for leading AIDS journalist Tamar Kahn;
Plus:
A draft bill of indictment against Zackie Achmat on a Charge of Genocide in the International Criminal Court at The Hague (linked below);
A letter (PDF 93 KB) about it to Mail&Guardian owner Trevor Ncube;
A letter to Professor Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School (PDF 170 KB);
A letter to Litsa Delli, television producer, MEGA-TV, Athens, Greece (PDF, 171 KB)
Here are the hyperlinks in the Delli letter.
Draft Bill of Indictment against Zackie Achmat on a Charge of Genocide in the International Criminal Court at The Hague
Political journalist Terry Michael in Washington found this criminal complaint (PDF, 970 KB) 'side-splittingly funny. If the TAC founder weren't so deadly serious, he would qualify as a clueless buffoon in a TV comedy.' But AIDS journalist Celia Farber in New York didn't think it amusing at all: 'I have read the complaint carefully, twice. Despite my 20 year immersion in the mind-reeling odyssey of the HIV Drugging Wars, I was disoriented, shocked, and wounded from this. It is so psychologically, politically, morally, and bio-chemically bizarre that one feels crazy from it. ... It builds calmly at first, then turns increasingly merciless, like the sealing bricks at the end of Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado.' Missing the irony, a friend in the German Left said she thought it 'sadistic'. On the other hand, an African supporter of mine told me that he read it out to his mates and had them all rolling about laughing. So is it serious? Is it a joke? Is it a serious joke - 'an elaborate spoof' as one reader put it? Read it and decide for yourself! You may conclude like the TAC's Mark Heywood did (complaining on the radio) that I wanted his chum Achmat 'tortured'. Or you may read the complaint as a parody of a formal criminal arraignment - a satirical attack on Western show trials generally - set in high legal language, but cut with mounting black humour, exposing Achmat's stupidity and ignorance, his dishonesty and hypocrisy, as it pleads the dismal facts with blistering sarcasm, on the way providing an informative introduction to what ARV drugs do to people, Achmat included. Turning a carving knife in his stomach as it does so. With a smile.
Here's the complaint in its original A4 layout (PDF 137 KB) served on the ICC's chief prosecutor. It's been translated into Spanish, French, Russian, Italian, German, and Dutch.
Introducing AZT: 'A world of antiretroviral experience'
This sequel to 'Debating AZT' includes research findings about the drug reported after the book was published. The text needs to be reformatted, aside from which it's complete.
Unlike 'Debating AZT', 'Introducing AZT' (PDF, 595 KB) has no author narrative, and instead lets the experts do the talking - both for and against the drug. (You might wonder after reading it whether the South African AIDS experts and activists sounding off in favour of this stuff shouldn't maybe go off for an IQ test.)
'Inventing AZT' (PDF, 28 KB) and 'Licensing AZT' (PDF, 40 KB) in the appendices relate the amazing history of the drug. In the case of 'Inventing AZT', the scientist who first synthesized it tells me the scoop story of how he invented AZT as a cell poison; read how he changed his mind about the use of AZT in pregnancy after reading the literature reviewed in 'Debating AZT'.
Brink's answering affidavit in the TAC's application in the Cape High Court to shut him up and shut him down
Writing in 'Empire' in December 2007 under the title 'The smear of denialism', Ronald Suresh Roberts says 'Anthony Brink ... denies that HIV causes AIDS and that AIDS exists' - which, of course, is Roberts's characteristically sleazy way of smearing Brink as a 'denialist' without actually using the word.
Considering how completely wrong Roberts got his account of Mbeki's thinking on AIDS - so wrong that Mbeki felt constrained to correct it - you might wonder what Brink actually thinks about it all?
Find out from Brink's extremely insolent affidavit (PDF, 777 KB) filed in the Cape High Court in mid-2007.
Here's the happy ending (PDF, 207 KB) in March 2008, three days after he filed his heads of argument (PDF 16KB).
To access all the affidavit's annexures, read the affidavit in its original A4 format (PDF, 514 KB). The annexures are hyperlinked.
Why I Support President Robert Mugabe: A Zimbabwe Reader
There's only one thing more infuriating to South African white liberals than informing them that the African AIDS scare is mass hysterical, racist nonsense, driven by post-colonial angst and middle-class moral panic, that the science on which it's all based is total junk, and that the AIDS drugs AZT and nevirapine are not 'life-saving' at all but completely useless and deadly poisonous, and that's defending Robert Mugabe as an outstanding African revolutionary and freedom fighter.
This book in preparation is a collection of interviews, speeches, histories and critical analyses of Zimbabwe's current problems and their causes, supporting an unfashionably positive view of the Zimbabwean President and his government.
Back cover (PDF, 74 KB).
Disaster: the ms lost in a HD cleanout on 21 June. Until it's rebuilt, spend some time looking around:
www.raceandhistory.com/Zimbabwe/ and
www.swans.com/library/subjects/africa.html
I recommend the writing of Stephen Gowans, Gregory Elich and Brendan Stone.