(This is a slight edit of some posts I wrote on Bluesky four months ago, before the confirmation of RFK Jr. It's still relevant so I figured I might as well put it together in one place.)
I'm glad to see Robert Kennedy's bullshit about HIV get some notice; still, when the HIV denialism is brought up, many comments are of the blank stare/"wtf, how is that even a thing" kind. I get it too; vaccines and transgender healthcare are more on people's radar.* But let me tell you about the horrible legacy of the man that Kennedy has called a "heroic healer": Peter Duesberg.
Duesberg, unlike Kennedy, had actual scientific knowledge in one field. And early on in the history of AIDS, scientists pursued all kinds of wild-ass guesses about what might be going on; Duesberg wasn't the only one who thought certain drugs, like poppers, might have a role. But he latched onto that idea early on—with some hedging about how maybe other recreational drugs and other STDs could be involved, all stuff he could ascribe to people's behavior, anything except a new viral pandemic—and did no research, and paid no attention to any progress after that.
Duesberg was immediately, and obviously, a crank and an egomaniac. No legitimate scientist ever behaves the way he did. A non-crank would ask themselves questions like "Does my work on retroviruses related to cancer really make me an expert on immunology?", or "Is it risky for me to tell everyone to ignore HIV?", or "Do I know enough about the people who are dying of AIDS for me to portray them as all wildly promiscuous drug abusers?", or "If my insight is so valuable, maybe I should do some research?" Instead he just kept doing interviews. And even though he did get public pushback, the press was still way too generous in describing him as a contrarian, a rebel, etc.—because that's a cool story. Also, some people latched onto the few sane things he said, like "the world isn't doing enough against malnutrition in Africa," and shut their ears to the rest, not unlike willfully ignorant fans of RFK Jr. now who focus on stuff like "well he's in favor of healthy food and doesn't like Big Pharma" as if those are bold new stances.
Of course, Duesberg himself did nothing to help people in Africa. Really less than nothing—since, like Kennedy, he gained influence over the highest elected official in a country: Thabo Mbeki, whose implementation of his advice in South Africa killed hundreds of thousands of people. Effective anti-HIV drugs were already available by then, far better than before; Duesberg didn't care. He also sadly convinced an actual AIDS activist who had HIV, Christine Maggiore, to forego treatment for herself and her child. Maggiore spent the next 14 years spreading the same gospel, even after her child died of AIDS; she only stopped when she herself died of AIDS, in 2008. Duesberg didn't care. His focus was entirely 1. I am right, 2. everyone is against me. And why was everyone against him? Because, in his view, The Establishment was too deferential to activists and minorities—who were the real causes of their own problems; the right-wing aspect of his views was never far under the surface.
The first time I heard Duesberg actually speak was in 1993 or '94, when, for my job, I had to listen to and transcribe an interview with him. He sounded exactly like what he was; he was even less charismatic than Robert Kennedy, but he knew the right phrases to use to appeal to people who fall for cranks. About seven years after that, I entered into the field of HIV care as a nurse (I'm not one now). Most of my co-workers had been in the field since the early years of total horror, and they could've retired, but they were so happy to be there now at a time when treatment generally worked. And that's why HIV denialism is much less of a thing people are aware of these days: people talk and think a lot less about AIDS in general, because it's not as huge a problem as it was (though, to be clear, it's still a bad problem, not over by any means).
But the cranks don't go away. There's no reason for people like Duesberg or Kennedy, or people who give them credence, to change their views just because they're overwhelmingly discredited. The evidence doesn't matter to them, it never did. It's about the personal legend of the contrarian. Kennedy calls Duesberg a healer not because his work ever had any positive effect on anyone's health, but because he wants to see himself that way, and because there's a great appeal in thinking you can be a hero in a way that involves never having to learn anything ever again. Crankism is incoherent in terms of ideas, but consistent in its ability to bring together people with the same personality flaws, imperviousness to evidence, and ability to dismiss the harm they do. There are many, they haven't gone away in 40 years, and giving Kennedy any governmental authority will bring them all in.
Here's something I bet you've heard about once a week for some time: "Was COVID from a lab? Just asking questions!"
Like most "just asking questions" things, this keeps getting brought up long after the questions have been answered. Sometimes that's because the goal wasn't really to ask questions but to push an agenda. Other times people just don't understand or don't trust the answers, or have followed some of the answers but then stopped updating their knowledge. I don't know which explanation is true for the latest fear-mongering op-ed in the New York Times by Alina Chan—which, like all such pieces, is presented so as to give a false impression that Dr. Chan either speaks for most researchers, or has put together evidence nobody else noticed.
This series of posts by Phillipp Markolin, summarizing a longer article that they link to, is the best I've seen lately about why most researchers don't think there's any real doubt about the COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) having evolved and spread naturally. It's technical, and Markolin does a decent job of boiling it down some, but I think it's possible to make it a little easier to follow for laypeople—so I'll try to do that here. (Standard disclaimer: my credentials are only that I've read enough about molecular biology in school to understand the gist of what Markolin is saying, and to see that it's consistent with what other scientists are saying, and that Chan's arguments do not take it into account.) ( Read more... )
There are things that are even more predictably mid-life-crisisy than spending time at age 51 poring over the details of your life in your 30s by reading old emails. But a lot of of those things, like buying a fancy car, are just not in the cards for me, and/or don't have the same inherent appeal for a compulsive reader and overthinker. So emails it is. ( Read more... )
This is the only one of Mike Flanagan's TV projects that was meant to continue, but it was immediately cancelled so for better or worse it ended up being another of his horror miniseries. (That's why this review isn't on Letterboxd, where ongoing or meant-to-be-ongoing shows aren't listed.) I liked two of the earlier ones a lot, another more-than-a-lot (I'll write about Midnight Mass eventually), and another not as much. It's obvious right away that this is the same guy, working in a similar style, doing another mashup of multiple works with an ensemble cast—but instead of his usual ensemble (except for a few cameos), it's a bunch of teen characters in adaptations of young-adult books by Christopher Pike. And it's great—one of his best I think, although the material is so different that it's hard to compare. ( Read more... )
I've been slowly recovering from a major crash in my reading momentum, to the point where I could easily believe I'm reading fewer than a dozen books a year. Actually when I looked back and figured out what I had read in 2022 and 2023, it wasn't that bad... but it was skimpy enough, with a relatively small amount of denser stuff, that it didn't take me long to bash out a bunch of retrospective capsule reviews for a year at a time. Here's what I can remember from the year before last, plus a handful of related ones from 2021. I'm sure there are some I missed but whatever.
Time Zone J by Julie Doucet (2022): It'd be hard to overstate what a big deal Doucet was to indie comics readers in the '90s, including me, and it was a bummer (but understandable) that the unrewardingness of the field led her to give it up for a long time. This wild book isn't a return to the kind of things she used to do but it's unmistakably hers and I love it. It's definitely comics, even though it has no familiar layout cues and starts out looking like just an especially good sketchbook until a narrative thread starts emerging from Doucet's many faces that wend their way through the riot of images—she doesn't ever literally depict the story she's telling, only her internal process of reliving it. Great at evoking stormy youth seen through older sadder eyes, while the energy and beauty of all the tangential stuff on every page, and the sharpness of the writing, make it clear that she's as strong as ever.
I wrote these because I just reprinted the first issue of my solo-anthology thing and the second one is finally underway. There's really no need to read these notes but I just like writing them. ( Read more... )
