The Rev Frank Chikane - yes, he of the organophosphorus-laced undergarments - has in recent days been acting as apologist in the Cape Town Murder Gazette Times for He who has been termed The Native Intelligence.  Yes, he whose best friends while in power were Jack, Johnny and Jim; who trawled the internet late at night, and believed what he found there.

And then put it into policy - or worse, did NOT enact policy as a result.  As a result of which, 300 000 people may have died.

According to the Rev Frank, the Univ of Sussex pseudo-intellectual of whom we speak - so ably outed as such by a former Editor of the Mail and Grauniad - was merely indulging his deity-given right of skepticism concerning what nasty pharmaceutical companies were pushing onto us.

That is, poisons in the guise of antiretrovirals - and worse, poisons which were to be given in ways not sanctioned in that source of all evil, The West.

Really, Frank?

You forget, my good Rev, that said Native Intelligence wrote an open letter to world leaders such as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, in which he said a number of things that pointed up his complete inability to comprehend how science works - and his complete and blind refusal to acknowledge facts given to him by people inside his own country.

I reproduce for you, therefore, something several of us wrote at the time - which may jog your memory.

Correspondence

Nature 405, 273 (18 May 2000) | doi:10.1038/35012786

AIDS dissidents aren't victims — but the people their ideas kill will be

Edward Rybicki¹, Anna-Lise Williamson² & Lynn Morris^3,4

1. Department of Microbiology, University of Cape Town, PB Rondebosch 7701, South Africa
2. Department of Medical Microbiology, University of Cape Town, PO Observatory 7925, South Africa
3. National Institute for Virology, Private Bag X4, Sandringham, Johannesburg 2131, South Africa
4. The authors are members of a consortium sponsored by the South African AIDS Vaccine Initiative, seeking to formulate vaccines to the HIV-1 subtype C viruses prevalent in the area.

Sir

As South African scientists working in the field of HIV/AIDS vaccine research, we are extremely concerned about the letter president Thabo Mbeki recently sent other heads of state (Nature 404, 911; 2000). As an individual Mr Mbeki is entitled to his point of view, but as our head of state we feel he risks binding our country to an untenable position.

Mr Mbeki's comments that distress us most are these:

1: "It is suggested ... that there are some scientists who are 'dangerous and discredited' with whom nobody ... should communicate or interact ... We are now being asked to do precisely the same thing that the racist apartheid tyranny we opposed did, because, it is said, there exists a scientific view that is supported by the majority, against which dissent is prohibited."

This is unfair. The views of the 'AIDS dissidents', publicly aired when the debate was current, are largely ignored now because most experts do not believe they have any currency in the light of today's knowledge. Yet the 33-member committee Mr Mbeki has convened to advise his government contains as many 'AIDS dissidents' from other countries as South African scientists. Less than half of the total are HIV/AIDS experts (see Nature 405, 105; 2000).

2: "The scientists we are supposed to put into scientific quarantine include Nobel prizewinners, members of academies of science and emeritus professors of various disciplines of medicine!"

This is a misleading statement: distinguished though these people may be, if they have not worked in areas concerning HIV/AIDS they may not be well-enough informed to have credibility in this debate.

3: "People who otherwise would fight very hard to defend the critically important rights of freedom of thought and speech occupy, with regard to the HIV/AIDS issue, the frontline in the campaign of intellectual intimidation and terrorism which argues that the only freedom we have is to agree with what they decree to be established scientific truths."

This is incorrect. 'AIDS dissidents' promote the idea that unholy alliances of pharmaceutical companies and funding bodies are bent on silencing them. The fact is that, if one's scientific views are very obviously not being backed up by other people's findings, one's scientific credibility is lessened. Internationally, science is a democratic institution: as such we would hope that Mr Mbeki would sympathize with it. This case has clear historical parallels with the championing of Trofim Lysenko's flawed science by the authorities in the former Soviet Union, and with the 'scientific' justifications of apartheid by the old South Africa. Neither is a good example to follow!

4: "It may be that these comments are extravagant. If they are, it is because in the very recent past, we had to fix our own eyes on the very face of tyranny."

This is irrelevant to the country's AIDS-related crisis. The previous government was guilty of inaction in the face of a threatened epidemic; the present government has not done enough in the past five years to stave off the disaster that now threatens us.

We would like Mr Mbeki and others to consider how the mass of South Africans would react if he were to give a sympathetic ear to unrepentant proponents of apartheid. His willingness to be influenced by people with no credibility causes as much anguish to those of us working to combat HIV/AIDS.

The simple facts, as shown by a huge volume of scientific and medical research, are that HIV causes AIDS; that in Africa (as in other developing regions) the disease is mainly spread heterosexually; and that AIDS kills poor people in disproportionate numbers. We most emphatically do not need to revisit the debate on the causation of AIDS. What we do urgently need is to educate, train and medicate, to save lives.

As long as Mr Mbeki is being advised by people with no credibility, we as South African scientists feel dangerously marginalized in the search for solutions to HIV/AIDS.

So, Rev Frank: who do you think comes off looking better over the last ten years?  Your principal, or the people who so vehemently opposed him - including the ones he made vicious ad hominem attacks on, in public forums?  I would apologise less for your man, Rev - or you may have to join The Intelligence in a cauldron of his making when the reckoning comes.