The Virus, Vitamins & Vegetables

Why were so few people able to declare publicly that the Emperor had no clothes? How was it that a health Minister was allowed to tout garlic, olive oil, lemons and beetroot over antiretrovirals? How can we make sure that this never happens again?
 
This collection of essays by some of South Africa’s foremost HIV/AIDS writers, doctors and activists, takes us down the rabbit hole of AIDS denialism. It is a lively reconstruction of one of the most bewildering events of post-apartheid South Africa, when the democratic government questioned the link between HIV and AIDS and disputed the efficacy of antiretroviral drugs. During this period, thousands of people died unnecessarily as their treatment became the subject of intellectual debate by politicians.

The Virus, Vitamins & Vegetables is edited by Kerry Cullinan and Anso Thom of Health-e News Service, a non-profit agency that has been covering HIV/AIDS and health in South Africa for the past ten years.

“The book chronicles the tragedy that unfolds when leaders choose to play with people’s lives by ignoring evidence and science and embracing the untested remedies and theories of those on the lunatic fringe. It challenges us to consider our choices and responsibilities in a time of deep crisis. It forces us to ask ourselves, ‘Isn’t there more we should have done to stop the madness?’”
– Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, Deputy Speaker of the South African National Assembly and former Deputy Health Minister.

“This book is about much more than merely writing up an important part of our history. It is about trying to understand the extent of the calamity that befell us through the mismanagement of AIDS, and how it happened, so as to forewarn us against a repetition.”

- Justice Edwin Cameron, Constitutional Court of South Africa judge and recipient of the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights

Contents include:
Introduction

1. In the beginning there was Virodene – James Myburgh
2. The President’s panel – Michael Cherry
3. Love, courage, insubordination and HIV/AIDS denialism – Pregs Govender
4. Courting morality: The fight to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission – Ashraf Coovadia
5. Daring to care: A doctor’s persecution in Mpumalanga – Thys von Mollendorff
6. Government’s strange bedfellows – Kerry Cullinan
7. The curious tale of the vitamin seller – Anso Thom
8. Garlic, olive oil, lemons and beetroot – Liz McGregor
9. Traditional alternatives? – Kanya Ndaki
10. Saints and sinners: The Treatment Action Campaign – Janine Stephen
11. Deadly cells: The struggle of HIV positive prisoners – Khopotso Bodibe
12. Speaking truth to power – Claire Keeton
13. Remembering a decade of the Treatment Action Campaign – Zackie Achmat

Postscript: Sipho Mthathi

About the Editors

Kerry Cullinan is Managing Editor of Health-e News Service, Africa's only dedicated multi-media health news agency. She has a Masters degree in media and communication from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is a multi-award winning journalist who has worked in the media since the mid-1980s, when she worked on newspapers such as City Press and New Nation, which was periodically banned by the apartheid government for its outspoken stance against racial oppression. She also served as a parliamentary correspondent after the democratic elections in 1994 -- but decided to leave to help start Health-e as there was more politics in HIV/AIDS than in Parliament!
 
Prior to 1994, she was involved in a number of anti-apartheid organisations including as an executive member of the Johannesburg Youth League, ANC Youth League Johannesburg and the ANC Yeoville Branch and the Association of Democratic Journalists. She lives in Durban, the world's AIDS epicenter.

Anso Thom is Health-e's Print Editor. She won the CNN African Journalist of the Year Award (with colleague Khopotso Bodibe) for HIV/AIDS reporting for her expose of Dr Matthias Rath, an unscrupulous vitamin seller promoting his products as an AIDS cure. She has won numerous other awards including health reporter of the year in 1999. She has been a journalist for the past 18 years, part of which was working for The Star, the daily national newspapers in Johannesburg, where she reported on crime and politics. She has been reporting on health since 1998, focusing on reporting on South Africa's Aids epidemic and other developmental health issues.

To find out more about Health-e News: http://www.health-e.org.za/