Breaking News from Alive & Well
July 2004
Top Entertainment Industry Voice
Comments on The Other Side of AIDS
Following its debut screening last month in New York, the well-known film industry magazine Variety ran a review of the documentary The Other Side of AIDS at its web site. Below are some of the many encouraging remarks included in the article. Look for the full text of the review coming soon to the film?s official web site
www.theothersideofaids.com where you can also check out the growing list of film festivals that have selected The Other Side of AIDS for screening.
From Variety:
?This explosively controversial documentary takes the "other side" of the official medical stance on the origin of AIDS, specifically doubting whether HIV is a cause of the disease?One cannot help but root for the underdog hypothesis. Add the story of a healthy infant force-fed AZT, and the cost of complacency appears too high.
?The first part of documentary argues strenuously that HIV is a viral construct that has neither been isolated nor proven to cause AIDS?It further contends that HIV tests only detect antibodies, not HIV itself, and that people can test positive for a number of non-specific reasons, including pregnancy. It speculates that a growing number of diseases are opportunistically and arbitrarily bundled under the nebulous AIDS umbrella [and] calls for a re-examination of the whole concept of AIDS and HIV.
?The main proponents of this theory include once-prominent Nobel-nominated scientist Peter Duesberg, whose stock in the scientific community declined sharply once he began second-guessing the role of HIV, and personable, articulate activist Christine Maggiore, who has lived healthily without AIDS medication since she was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1992.
?Various other men and women diagnosed with HIV, but electing not to take drugs, weigh in with testimonies. Particularly interesting are those who allege that support groups in fact encourage fatalism and contribute to death: any belief in the ability to beat the odds is considered a form of denial that needs to be quickly nipped in the bud. One interviewee likens this to primitive societies' death-inducing beliefs in taboos and spells?
?[The film] probably scores the most points in an emotion-charged interview with an HIV-positive mother forced by the State to give her newborn infant AZT although the baby, as well as her husband and other child, all tested negative. The inflexibility of the medical establishment, backed by drug companies and enforced by governmental decree seem in these cases to form an unholy alliance.
?The picture which has been denounced by gay organizations such as ACT UP, has already led to virulent controversy, and promises to become a cause celebre in the medical and gay communities.?