Aids Denialism… Yep, That's a Thing
In the early days of the AIDS epidemic many bizarre and dangerous ideas were advanced regarding the origin of the disease and its cause. Since the discovery of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) these conspiracy theories, which once filled the void left by the lack of information, have all but vanished. Over the past three decades HIV has been the subject of intense scientific research which has resulted in effective treatments, rapid HIV tests, and promising cures.
Yet unbelievably there are a small number of people who are sceptical of the “official story”. Although these people are small in numbers they are extremely well funded and can pose a very real threat to public health. Many have chosen to spend their money on spreading their harmful theories, defend people who have irresponsibly infected their partners, and funded the documentary House of Numbers.
In this talk, Myles Power discusses some examples of the dangerous assertions and explain how they have led to the death and suffering of hundreds of thousands of people. He will also talk about the failure of the DMCA and how it can be exploited by the proponents of pseudoscience.
Here's Myles' bio (shamelessly stolen from his web page): For those of you who are just tuning in, my name is Myles Power and I run the educational YouTube channel powerm1985. I am originally from a small town in the North East of England called Middlesbrough, but have spend a large potion of my adult life living in Manchester. I am a chemist who is is currently working in industry, but what little free time I have I spend sharing my love of SCIENCE! through home experiments, visiting sites of scientific interest and angry rants at pseudoscience opponents. I studied chemistry specialising in organic chemistry at the University of Manchester and Toronto. Later in my career, I moved more towards bio-chemistry and worked on projects including the synthesising various nucleic acid analogues for non-enzymatic transcription and controlling gene expression using a mutant riboswitch. I have over 7 years of experience working in a research lab, which has given me the skills I need to research and debunk virus psuedoscience theories. Some of the theories I have discussed on my YouTube channel including AIDS denialists, 911 truthers, the anti-vaccination movement and homeopathy to name a few. I also am one of the founding members of the podcast The League of Nerds which I co-host with James from The History of Infection.