Behind Harper’s
Folly:
Farber, Hodge and the Denialist Deception
By John Moore, Ph.D., and Jeanne
Bergman, Ph.D.
March 2006
Celia Farber: An AIDS
Denialist Masquerading as a Journalist
Celia Farber, the author of the March
2006 Harper’s Magazine article
attacking HIV clinical research, misrepresents herself to the popular
media as
a legitimate journalist and science writer, interested only in doggedly
covering a good story. She is in fact
an AIDS “dissident” who has been publicizing and extolling the claims
of AIDS
denialists and attacking scientific research on HIV/AIDS since the late
1980s.
Farber has signed the two
defining petitions of HIV denialism, she co-authored with members of
the
denialist group HEAL a core tract of
the
denialist movement called "HIV: Against Science," she described
herself in the subtitle of one of her articles “an AIDS Dissident” and
she is a
prominent member of the denialist “Group for the Scientific Reappraisal
of the
HIV/AIDS Hypothesis.” Her denialism is
well documented, but she conceals her beliefs in order to fool the
mainstream
media into allowing her to promote them in print.
Farber’s main contribution to the
AIDS denialist movement is to broadcast their views to the general
public in
the disguise of objective journalism.
In her
writing for the popular press, she has consistently and deceptively
refused to
fully disclose her deep involvement with, and her role as a
spokesperson for,
the denialist camp. She has also evaded
explaining clearly her own understanding or beliefs about HIV and AIDS. Instead, she allows other denialists to
make
the case for her in extended, laudatory quotes, while maintaining the
pretense
that she is just an objective reporter
asking
honest questions, and one who is unfairly abused for her honesty:
All I ever did was follow and
report, with what some may consider
excessive attention, the vital debate about whether HIV is the cause of
AIDS.
And whether AZT is a viable therapy for those who are HIV antibody
positive.
And whether being HIV antibody positive is the same as "having" HIV.
And whether "having" HIV necessarily means your immune system is
decaying. Etc. I consider all of these questions to be very
straightforward,
logical, and of obvious importance. I simply picked up a thread and
followed
it. (Farber , “AIDS Inc.” 1994).
Farber’s disingenuous claim to
“follow and report” on an issue in which she is deeply committed to one
side is
one she has tried to maintain even as the Harper’s Magazine piece
brought new
attention to the denialist clique. She
is reported in the New York Times as saying that
she “does not endorse [denialist Peter] Duesberg’s position but
is simply reporting on an unpopular view. ‘People can't distinguish, it
seems,
between describing dissent and being dissent [sic],’” she wrote in an
email to
the reporter, Lia Miller. But
in fact,
people can distinguish between reportage and the party line, and Farber has always toed the latter.
She has for two decades consistently attacked
medicine, belittled scientific research and enthusiastically promoted
denialists and their various claims. There is nothing even remotely
balanced in
her work.
Despite the denialist motive that
drives her writing, Farber lacks the courage of her convictions
and won’t publicly stand behind the denialist ideology she promotes so
relentlessly. She even cravenly disclaims her own positions when
cornered. In a recent email she sent to a
wide
circulation list, she wrote of her Harper’s Magazine article, "It does
not, for example, say that all AIDS drugs are ghastly, or worthless."
No,
perhaps not in those exact words, but
Farber
is being disingenuous. What her article
does say is "Duesberg thinks that up to 75 percent of AIDS cases in the
West can be attributed to drug toxicity. If toxic AIDS therapies were
discontinued, he says, thousands of lives could be saved virtually
overnight." In the same email, she asserted “In each article [in the
past]
where I have addressed HAART I have included, clearly, the fact
that the regimens have absolutely helped people who are very sick.” That statement’s as absolutely false as it is
hypocritical. For example, in an article
about HAART published in 2000, she made two comments about the benefits
of
antiretroviral drugs:
here are facts and figures, studies and
counter-studies,
a virtual blizzard of data that could be arranged to show any number of
things.
The new AIDS drugs have saved people's lives: that's one piece of
truth. The
new AIDS drugs have killed people: that's another. The new AIDS drugs
have
damaged and deformed some people so badly that although they are alive,
they
wish they were dead.
And:
Precisely what it means for a
life to be "saved" is
complicated, especially when the patient was not sick to begin with. As
[German
denialist Claus] Koehnlein wryly commented, "If you treat completely
healthy people you can claim great therapeutic success."
Both of these statements, spun by
sarcasm, are in effect claims that no
people
with HIV/AIDS have benefited from HAART, which is a blatant lie.
Farber has tried to portray
herself as a neutral observer to The New York Times and critics by
claiming she
merely presents the contradictory
views of
others for the edification of the reader.
But when we reviewed 34 articles about AIDS by Farber, we found
that the
clear thesis and topic of every single one was some variant of AIDS
denialism--HIV does not cause AIDS; AIDS doesn't exist; there is no
heterosexual AIDS; there is no AIDS epidemic in Africa; HIV is not
transmitted
by sex or by semen or by breastmilk; HIV does not exist...
Farber’s writing
style typically highlights extensive
quotes from denialists, whom she describes in warm, laudatory and respectful
terms and whose claims are given great credence. By
contrast, she consistently attacks
legitimate HIV science, medicine, researchers and AIDS activists. Occasionally, she takes the words of
legitimate doctors and advocates out
of
context to support the denialist argument.
All of this is held together with her grandiose narrative of her
Quest
for The Truth: This, she says, “is my private hell, but also my great
Sisyphean
challenge. My labyrinth…” (Berkowitz:
“Interview” 2000).
Celia Farber wants the world to
regard her as a courageous and objective
investigative journalist, but in reality she’s nothing more than a
lying
propagandist for the denialist mini-movement.
What is shocking is that Harper’s
Magazine’s editors fell for this scam.
Roger Hodge: In
Cahoots or Just Incompetent?
Roger Hodge, Farber’s editor and,
sadly, the man replacing Harper’s
Magazine’s legendary editor Lewis Lapham, has defended his
ignominious
debut by claiming that he is merely airing an important controversy. It is not yet clear if he actually
shares Farber’s denialism or was, by failing to exercise due diligence,
merely
deceived by her masquerade as a journalist.
Quite possibly, both of these things are true.
On the question of HIV as the cause of AIDS,
he told Gay City News “I don’t feel
like I am qualified to judge it”—a dodge similar to Farber’s feints
when she’s
in the headlights. The New York Times
reported that “Mr. Hodge said the magazine stood behind the article and
Ms.
Farber. ‘The fact that she's been
covering
this story does not make her a crackpot — it makes her a journalist.
She's a
courageous journalist, I believe, because she has covered the story at
great
personal cost.’”
Hodge also continues to assert
the accuracy of the article against the overwhelming evidence presented
to him
that the piece is a farrago of fabrications, errors and innuendo. Gay City News reported that he
said: “It was very, very thoroughly fact-checked
over the course of three months. … A lot of what people are describing
as
errors are differences of opinion about the data.”
But his fact-checkers
were either biased or incompetent, because
at least
58 scientific and non-scientific howlers made it into print
(www.aidstruth.org). Did Farber
provide Hodge with her own list of “experts” to consult as fact-checkers?
Or did Hodge select them based on his
own
knowledge of science and medicine? In
either case, this vital task in the editing of any article was
thoroughly
botched.
If all it takes
to get a science-bashing article into the
new, dumbed-down Harper’s Magazine is
to warm-over baseless conspiracy theories and wild speculation, then we
can
expect the next issue to feature a
piece from
the Discovery Institute that promotes Intelligent Design—let’s teach
the
controversy, brave Sir Roger! And
perhaps he’ll offer space to the oft-maligned Holocaust denialists,
too, who
make the same claim that legitimate scholars will not pay attention to
their
theories.
Hodge’s quotes in
Gay
City News (www.gaycitynews.com/gcn_509/hivdenialismin.html) reveal
that he
still sees AIDS denialism as something honorable, a case of the little
guy
taking on the big bad wolves of the federal government and the
pharmaceutical
industry, standing up to be counted, risking it all for the sake of the
truth
and freedom of speech. If this were
true, Hodge would have the full support of all of us, for we share this
predisposition. We, like most scientists and AIDS activists,
are liberals and progressives. That’s why it’s so difficult for us to
accept
that Harper’s Magazine, a journal aimed at liberal intellectuals,
would print Farber’s article. The AIDS
denialists are not honest dissidents, and they tarnish the word by
using
it. In South
Africa, they even have tried to link
their
dissidence to that of Nelson Mandela, as if the two positions could in
any way
be equated. And when it comes to craven
profiteering and the unethical exploitation of people with HIV, the
denialists’
champions, such as Matthias Rath and David Rasnick, take the cake.
Where Roger Hodge got it so badly
wrong was to allow such an obviously error-ridden and biased article
into a
once-reputable magazine. In the
circumstances, Hodge should now do what is honorable and resign for the
sake of
his magazine’s reputation. He’s proven himself not up to the task of
editing an
article. He’s proven unable to exercise intelligent judgment about
scientific
discourse, medicine, public health and the HIV epidemic.
He’s proven himself gullible and sloppy by
being fooled by a writer he told Gay City News he’s known for “many
years.” Perhaps you knew Farber both too
well and not well enough, Roger? And
perhaps, Lewis Lapham, you knew Roger both too well and not well enough
when
bequeathing your legacy to him?
John P. Moore,
Ph.D.
Professor
of Microbiology and
Immunology
Joan
and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University
New York, NY
Jeanne Bergman,
Ph.D.
Health
GAP
New York, NY
