Eat The Press

Even AIDS Denialists Need Work

The New York Observer |  Sheelah Kolhatkar |  Posted Wednesday June 28, 2006 at 03:30 PM

Today's New York Observer has a long piece today on Celia Farber, "a central figure among the AIDS 'dissenters.'" Since the late 1980s, while working at Spin magazine, Farber has been promoting the thesis that HIV doesn't actually cause AIDS. As the Observer's Sheelah Kolhatkar puts it, Farber believes "that the scientific explanations for the AIDS epidemic are corrupted by drug companies that seek to show that AIDS is amenable to drug therapies -- profitable ones." The word "radical" hardly seems to do Farber's ideas justice.

Yet in March of this year, Harper's published a 15-page article by Farber, half of which was devoted to pushing her claim that AIDS has been invented by pharmaceutical companies whose treatments -- supposed treatments, to Farber -- are the real cause of death for those diagnosed with HIV. It was not a high point for the venerated magazine. Richard Kim of The Nation immediately rounded up rebuttals to Farber's scientific contentions and lamented that it was "a shame that a magazine as well respected as Harper's has shirked its duty to report on these issues." Gal Beckerman of CJR Daily wrote, "Harper's should be more careful about giving so much legitimacy -- 15 pages of it -- to such an illegitimate and discredited idea." Many more scientists and media critics expressed similar sentiments.

Kolhatkar's piece reveals more of the backstory behind the publication of Farber's Harper's piece -- in particular, recently departed editor Lewis Lapham's interest in Farber's skepticism of mainstream science. Roger Hodge, who edited Farber's piece and who has since been promoted to editor-in-chief of Harper's, told Kolhatkar that "we knew what we were getting into" when he and Lapham decided to publish Farber's article. He added, "Celia is an excellent reporter and I hope she brings us more good stories in the future." That Hodge has not learned from Farber's most recent foray into journalism -- which was widely and vigorously discredited -- is unsettling, to say the least.

Farber's crusade against AIDS, as the Observer notes, has mostly been detrimental to her writing career, but she sees herself as a noble dissenter and truth-teller amidst the lies propagated by virtually everyone else in the scientific community. If she's really having some trouble finding work, perhaps Farber can seek out employment opportunities with the intelligence design proponents at The Discovery Institute or the global warming denialists at The Competitive Enterprise Institute. They could surely make use of her talents.

- Ankush Khardori